Ultra-micro Quantitative Analysis of Vinyl Chloride Monomer in Water

A simple method was developed for the determination of vinyl chloride monomer by using head space analysis. This method can detect as little as 0.1 ppb of vinyl chloride monomer in water. By the water elution test for 72 hr at room temperature, 106±8.8 μg/m2 of the monomer was detected from poly vinyl chloride (PVC) pipe (containing 8.9 ppm of the monomer) in spite of various sizes of surface area, and this value was only ca. 1% of total vinyl chloride monomer. Among 106 samples of drinking water which were not used so frequently such as faucet of a public garden, vinyl chloride monomer was detected from 28 samples and their average was 1.8±9.8 ppb. Vinyl chloride monomer was not detected from the drinking water samples in ordinary use. This technique can be applied to the quantitative analysis of the monomer in PVC products.