Diffusional sampling devices offer many advantages for measuring concentration levels of industrial contaminants than the conventional pump and charcoal tubes because they arc lightweight, require no power, pump or tubing. This study designed to evaluate and compare the sampling performance of passive sampler to charcoal tube from mixed organic solvent workplace with 181 organic solvent using workers working in different concentration of organic solvents. All study workers kept both devices in their breathing zone simultaneuosly in the workplaces, and the sampling analytical results were compared with those of charcoal tube.
The results obtained are as follows:
1. The concentrations of toluene and xylene measured by passive sampler were slightly higher than thaw of charcoal tube, but there were no significant statistical differences between two methods.
2. The concentrations of MEK and cyclo-hexanone measured by passive sampler in low exposure workplace (below 0.20 of MEK TLV levels and 0.1 of cyclo-hexanone TLV levels) were about 2 times higher than that of charcoal tube sampling. While, absorption efficiency of passive sampler was reduced according to increasing concentration measurements of MEK and cyclo-hexanone in air.
3. The ratios of concentrations of toluene, xylene, MEK and cyclo-hexanone measured by passive sampler over those measured by charcoal tube were 1.11, 1.07, 1.63 and 3.65 respectively
4. The percentages of concentration of passive samplers within 0.75 and 1.25 of charcoal tube value as a reference value of 1.0 were 57% in toluene, 74% in xylene, 34% in MEK and 32% in cyclo-hexanone respectively.
5. The correlation coefficients of toluene, xylene, MEK and cyclo-hexanone between passive sampler and charcoal tube sampler were 0.963, 0.957, 0.943 and 0.562 with statistical significance.
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