[AquarianEssence]

This question came to me as I read an FBI summary of an air test they conducted on a car trunk that had a very high level of chloroform, leading them to not only assert that human decomposition occurred in the trunk but that also chloroform may have been used against the person. I know very little about chloroform but I do know a bit about volatility, working with essential oils. This car sat at a tow yard with a bag of household garbage containing maggots in it for over two weeks before the test. Over a month passed since the last time the person in question was seen. It is possible some cleaning was done on the trunk after leaving the tow yard, before police impounded it.  There were dryer sheets in the trunk also (possible chloroform content?). Some facts I've gathered:

Chloroform is highly volatile, having a boiling point of 61.3 Celsius or 142° Fahrenheit. The other measurment showing volatility is the vapor pressure. At 0° C (32F) it measures 8.13 kPa (kilopascals ), and at 20° C it measures 21.28 kPa. (1 kilopascal is the equivalent of about 1% of the atmospheric pressure at sea level.)  The higher the vapor pressure of a liquid at a given temperature, the higher the volatility and the lower the normal boiling point of the liquid.
Compared to a volatile essential oil, Melaleuca's boiling point is 176° C or 349° F. Another top note essential oil that comes to mind is Orange. It's boiling point is also 176° C or 349° F and has an evaporation rate of 0.2 (BuAc=1). The vapor density where air=1 is over 1. The vapor pressure at 20° C is 2 mmHg or 0.266 kPa.

Chloroform clearly has a much lower boiling point and higher evaporation rate. If you put a top note oil like Orange or Lemon oil on a cotton ball, it will be evaporated or diffused in 2-4 hours. Chloroform would evaporate even faster, especially given the fact that the trunk of the car reached well over 100°. In contrast, gasoline, the other common trunk odor signature, during summer temperatures is to have volatility guidelines in place that allow no more than 50% evaporation at temperatures between 170 and 250°.

Cars parked in direct sunlight can reach temperatures up to 131 F-172 F (55 C-78 C) when outside temperatures are 80 F-100 F (27 C-38 C). I would assume the trunk would become the hottest and easily hot enough to diffuse and vaporize any chloroform present. This leads me to wonder if there was something  creating chloroform when the air in the trunk was captured and tested.

My question is, what is the life of chloroform once the source is removed under these conditions? The average outside air temp during the time was around 85°F. Or, if it was spilled on the trunk liner over a month prior would it still be there to show up in air samples?

Thanks for any input.
Connie