BLOOD AIR PARTITION-COEFFICIENT DETERMINATIONS - AUTOMATION AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE EQUILIBRIUM PARTITIONING IN CLOSED SYSTEMS METHOD

The equilibrium partitioning in closed systems method has been frequen tly used for determining partition coefficients between liquid and gas phases. We developed several improvements in this method: preparation of test atmospheres with a dynamic solvent vapor generator, automatio n of gas phase analysis, and estimation of the precision of the partit ion coefficients using a statistical procedure that did not require pa iring of test and reference measurements. Blood/air partition coeffici ents measured in a blood-bank blood sample for acetone, 1,1,1-trichlor oethane, toluene, and styrene were: 309 +/- 2, 5.6 +/- 0.1, 16.2 +/- 0 .5 and 49 +/- 2 (geometric mean +/- estimated SE, respectively). Water /air partition coefficients were: 361 +/- 7, 2.9 +/- 0.3, 4.6 +/- 0.5, and 6.9 +/- 0.9 for acetone, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, toluene, and styr ene.