There is growing concern that VOC emissions from materials used indoors in buildings should be monitored to ensure that building occupants are not exposed to potentially harmful chemicals. Monitoring can be absolute (determining, for example, emission rates in micrograms per square meter-hour), or relative (e.g., does one building product emit more or less than others). Automating the sampling process removes effi ciency barriers associated with these types of studies when using environmental test chambers or even micro-scale chambers to monitor the potential impact of VOC emissions on indoor air quality.
In this study, the Dynamic Headspace (DHS Large) system with a 1 L sampling vessel was used to monitor volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from building materials. The DHS large can be set up to perform a single dynamic headspace sampling under set conditions or to sample multiple times from the same vessel, providing near real time monitoring of the sample’s volatile emission profile.