measurement of chloroform in swimming pools' waters and swimmers’ blood

background: a new microextraction method named dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (dllme) for determination of chloroform in pool water and blood of swimmers after swimming is described. methods: this method was performed based on coupling dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (dllme) with gas chromatog­raphy-mass spectrometry (gc-ms). methanol and trichloroethylenes were used as the disperser solvent and the extrac­tion solvents, respectively. the volumes of these solvents were optimized for pool water by central composite design. the study involved three indoor swimming pools and nine swimmers. results: chloroform concentration of pool water was 118-135 µg l -1 and of blood ranged from 1.26 to 1.66 µg l -1 . conclusion: indoor swimming pools are closed environments presenting detectable levels of trihalomethanes (thms). chloro­form (chcl 3 ) is the most represented thms. therefore, the presence of chcl 3 may be considered representative of the thms. the new method dllme was applied for determination of chcl 3 in pool water and blood of swimmers after swim­ming inside the indoor swimming pool. the method was optimized by experimental design. chloroform concentra­tions in the specified pool waters were 135, 124, 118 µg l -1 .