Evaluation of New GC/MS Method for the Determination of Aldehydes in Air by the O- (4-trifluoromethoxybenzyl) hydroxylamine Derivatization

O- (4-trifluoromethoxybenzyl) hydroxylamine (TBFA) has been developed as a derivatizing reagent for the determination of aldehydes in air. Round robin tests using this reagent for formaldehyde (FA) and acetaldehyde (AA) were conducted by 15 laboratories. Three kinds of test samples were analyzed by each laboratories: a) a silica cartridge of TFBA (TF-A) on which the gaseous sample of FA was collected. b) a silica cartridge of TFBA (TF-B) to which TFBA derivative of AA was added. c) the acetonitrile solution (TF-C) of TFBA derivatives of FA and AA. TFBA derivatives were eluted from the cartridge with acetonitrile, and then determined by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) . The mean observed values after rejection tests were coincident with the calculated ones, and the intralaboratory relative standard deviations (RSD) of the ratios of the observed value to the calculated ones were in the rage of 4.7-12.8 % and the interlaboratory RSD of their ratios were 15.1-17.5 % except for that of TF-B (33.5 %) . These results indicated that this new method was comparable to the DNPH (2, 4-dinitrophenylhydrazine) method widely used for the determination of aldehydes in air.