Abstract

Water/air, blood/air, oil/air, oil/water, and oil/blood partition (or solubility) coefficients of 17 aromatic hydrocarbons and ketones were measured by a newly developed vial-equilibration method, which needs no direct measurements of the concentration either in the liquid or in the air phase, but only the gas chromatographic peak heights of the air in the sample (in which a test material is contained) and reference vessels (containing no test material). It was found that the blood/air partition coefficients for aromatic hydrocarbons are correlated closely with the product of water/air and oil/air partitiion coefficients, whereas those for ketones are almost in the same range as the water/air, irrespective of the oil/air partition coefficients.