Abstract
Chloroform and methylene chloride were extracted from human whole blood and urine by headspace solid phase microextraction (SPME) using a Carboxen/polydimethylsiloxane (Carboxen/PDMS) fibre before capillary gas chromatography (GC)/flame ionization detection (FID). Whole blood or urine was placed in a vial and mixed with distilled water. The vial was heated at 30°C, and the solvents were extracted from the headspace by SPME. The extraction efficiencies of chloroform and methylene chloride from whole blood were 40.3% and 35.8%, respectively; those for urine were 57.0% and 43.6%, respectively. The calibration curves for chloroform were linear in the range of 1–8 μg/ml for blood and urine samples, and those for methylene chloride in the range of 0.5–8 μg/ml. The detection limits for both compounds were 0.3 μg/ml for whole blood, and 0.2 μg/ml for urine. The headspace SPME with Carboxen/PDMS fibre coupled with GC/FID seems useful for analyses of chloroform and methylene chloride in forensic toxicology and environmental chemistry.