Unknown exposures: gaps in basic characterization addressed with person-portable gas chromatography-mass spectrometry instrumentation.

A newly developed person-portable gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) system was used to analyze several solvent standards, contact cement, paint thinner, and polychlorinated biphenyl samples. Passive solid phase microextraction sampling and fast chromatography with a resistively heated low thermal mass GC column were used. Results (combined sampling and analysis) were obtained in <2 min for solvent, contact cement, and paint thinner samples, and in <13 min for the polychlorinated biphenyl sample.