Lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma are inflammatory diseases that have risen worldwide, posing a major public health issue, encompassing not only physical and psychological morbidity and mortality, but also incurring significant societal costs. The leading cause of death worldwide by cancer is that of the lung, which, in large part, is a result of the disease often not being detected until a late stage. Although COPD and asthma are conditions with considerably lower mortality, they are extremely distressful to people and involve high healthcare overheads. Moreover, for these diseases, diagnostic methods are not only costly but are also invasive, thereby adding to people’s stress. It has been appreciated for many decades that the analysis of trace volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath could potentially provide cheaper, rapid, and non-invasive screening procedures to diagnose and monitor the above diseases of the lung. However, after decades of research associated with breath biomarker discovery, no breath VOC tests are clinically available. Reasons for this include the little consensus as to which breath volatiles (or pattern of volatiles) can be used to discriminate people with lung diseases, and our limited understanding of the biological origin of the identified VOCs. Lung disease diagnosis using breath VOCs is challenging. Nevertheless, the numerous studies of breath volatiles and lung disease provide guidance as to what volatiles need further investigation for use in differential diagnosis, highlight the urgent need for non-invasive clinical breath tests, illustrate the way forward for future studies, and provide significant guidance to achieve the goal of developing non-invasive diagnostic tests for lung disease. This review provides an overview of these issues from evaluating key studies that have been undertaken in the years 2010–2019, in order to present objective and comprehensive updated information that presents the progress that has been made in this field. The potential of this approach is highlighted, while strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are discussed. This review will be of interest to chemists, biologists, medical doctors and researchers involved in the development of analytical instruments for breath diagnosis.

Sensitive real-time detection of vapors produced by toxic industrial chemicals (TICs) represents a stringent priority nowadays. Carbon disulfide (CS₂) is such a chemical, being widely used in manufacturing synthetic textile fibers and as a solvent. CS₂ is simultaneously a very reactive, highly flammable, irritant, corrosive, and highly toxic compound, affecting the central nervous system, cardiovascular system, eyes, kidneys, liver, skin, and reproductive system. This study was directed towards quick detection and quantification of CS₂ in air, using time-of-flight ion mobility spectrometry (IMS); photoionization detection (PID) was also used as confirmatory technique. Results obtained indicated that IMS can detect CS₂ at trace levels in air. The ion mobility spectrometric response was in the negative ion mode and presented one product ion, at a reduced ion mobility (K₀) of 2.25 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹. Our study demonstrated that by using a portable, commercial IMS system (model Mini IMS, I.U.T. GmbH Berlin Germany) one can easily measure CS₂ at concentrations of 0.1 ppm_v (0.3 mg m⁻³) in the negative ion mode, which is below the lowest threshold value of 1 ppm_v given for industrial hygiene. A limit of detection (LOD) of ca. 30 ppb_v (0.1 mg m⁻³) was also estimated.