Abstract

A gas chromatographic method has been developed to determine the following metabolites in urine simultaneously if necessary: hippuric acid from toluene or styrene; 3- and 4-methyl hippuric acids from xylenes; phenylglyoxylic acid and mandelic acid from styrene. Heptadecanoic acid is added to the urine as an internal standard and after ethyl acetate extraction from acidic solution, the trimethylsilyl (TMS) derivatives of the metabolites are formed and simultaneously analysed by gas chromatography on 3% OV-1 on 80/100 gas chrom Q (flame ionisation detector).