VOC stands for what?

• A. Very Organic Compounds
• B. Volatile Organic Compounds
• C. Visible Odor Compounds
• D. Vaporized Organic Compounds

Answer: (B)

VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compounds. These are organic chemicals that readily vaporize at room temperature because they have relatively high vapor pressures and low boiling points. That volatility means they can off-gas from many everyday products—paints, solvents, cleaning agents, building materials, and fuels—into indoor and outdoor air, impacting air quality and potentially health and safety. The term is a standard way to describe these airborne organic chemicals, not simply any odor or a state of matter.

Other options aren’t used in this context: they don’t capture the chemical property of volatility in the way “vola­tile” does, and one suggests a perceptual attribute (odor) rather than the chemical behavior.