Critical Evaluation of and Suggestions for the VOCs Measurement Method Established as the Korean Indoor Air Quality Standard Method

During the last two decades, indoor air quality and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have been of concern in Korean society due to their nature of potential health impacts. In order to investigate the pollution levels of VOCss in indoor environments, establishment of a solid test method for monitoring the airborne VOCss is essential. In Korea, a method based on adsorbent sampling and GC analysis coupled with thermal desorption was proclaimed as the Korea Standard Method for Indoor Air Quality Test. This study was carried out to examine some inherent problems of the VOCs measurement method. The VOCs method does not describe in detail preparing the standard samples. The standard samples may be prepared by impregnation of either liquid standard solutions or a mixture of standard gases. In this study, we investigated the optimal temperature condition for transferring the liquid standards onto a standard adsorbent tube. As a result, keeping the impregnation temperature at $250^{\circ}C$ will be recommended in regard of the boiling points of multiple target analytes and the thermal stability of the adsorbent. We also demonstrated some problems associated with handling of a syringe used for transferring the standard solutions onto the adsorbent tubes, and a best way to get rid of the syringe problems was suggested. Finally, a number of field works were conducted to evaluate the performance of adsorbent sampling methods. Comparison of different adsorbent tubes, i.e. tube packed with single sorbent (Tenax) and double sorbents (Tenax with Carbotrap), revealed that 30 to 40% differences between the two groups, implying that sampling efficiency is depending on the volatility and the strength of adsorbents. However, duplicate precisions for VOCs sampling with a same type of adsorbent and at same flow rates appeared to be satisfactory to be all within 20%, which is a quality control guideline. Distributed volume precisions were also found to be within a guideline value, 25%, although the precision was in general inferior to the duplicate precision. The Korea indoor VOCs test method should be more refined and improved in many aspects, particularly procedure and instrumentation for preparing the standard samples and specification of quality control assessment.

실내공기질 공정시험법 중 VOCs 측정방법의 문제점 고찰 및 개선방안에 관한 연구