Analysis of thiodiglycol in urine of victims of an alleged attack with mustard gas, Part II.

Improvements on a procedure for the determination of thiodiglycol in urine are presented. This procedure is based on the conversion of thiodiglycol to mustard gas with concentrated HCl followed by headspace analysis. With deuterated thiodiglycol as the internal standard, more accurate quantitative analyses are possible. Residual amounts of chlorine in the water used for preparation of standard solutions posed problems, and the reaction between chlorine and thiodiglycol in water has been studied. The possible formation of mustard gas from thiodiglycol and sodium chloride was also investigated. The modified procedure was applied to urine samples of several Iranian patients who were victims of an alleged attack with mustard gas and who were treated in European hospitals in 1986. With the exception of one relatively high value (330 ng/mL), the thiodiglycol concentrations were in the same range (10 to 100 ng/mL) as those found during an investigation in 1984. The urine of 20 male controls contained thiodiglycol amounts not above 20 ng/mL. The combined data obtained in 1984 and 1986 (25 Iranian patients and 25 controls) show statistically significant differences. Approximately 80% of the Iranian patients had levels above the 95% confidence limit calculated from the control group.