Development of a headspace sampling-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method for the analysis of fireground contaminants on firefighter turnout materials

Abstract

Firefighting is classified as a 2B-possibly carcinogenic profession by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Firefighters are exposed to a host of toxic fireground contaminants such as phenols, phthalates, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), many of which are potentially carcinogenic. Studies show that the exposure to contaminated firefighter gear postfire poses a health risk to the firefighters. This study focused on the issue of contaminants being present on the gear and developing a thermal extraction method to perform the assessment. A headspace sampler (HS) connected to a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) system was used to thermally extract known fireground contaminants and understand the effect of equilibration time and temperature on the thermal extraction efficiencies. The outer shell fabric samples (PBI/Kevlar blend) were spiked with known amounts of fireground chemicals, heated at various temperatures (36, 50, 100, and 200 °C), and analyzed using the developed method to calculate extraction efficiencies. This study is one of the first to utilize the all-in-one HS-GC-MS instrument to analyze the thermal extraction of a variety of fireground contaminants relative to different temperatures from firefighter gear materials. Based on the conditions evaluated, the results indicate that the 200 °C condition allowed for the maximum thermal extraction of contaminants from the outer shell material. The data collected from this study pave a way of creating a new method for the analysis of volatile and semivolatile contaminants from field-contaminated firefighter turnout material using HS-GC-MS.