3.2. Application in practical cases
After validation, the method was applied at the forensic toxicology service of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, Coimbra, Portugal to all cases in which the presence of volatile substances was suspected. In several cases it was possible to detect and quantify VOCs in whole blood, urine and vitreous humor. As an example, we present two forensic cases in which the procedure was applied. The first concerns a situation in which we observed the presence of unknown peaks during routine analysis for the determination of blood alcohol; in the second case there was the suspicion of poisoning by volatile substances.