In recent years, the health effects of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have attracted increasing attention. However, there is no published literature conducting a bibliometric analysis to explore the tendency. The purpose of this study is to provide a bibliometric analysis of the research on the health effects of VOCs over the past 16 years.Based on the data retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database, several bibliometric indicators mainly including topics (keywords), journals, co-citation relationship, leading countries and institutions were evaluated. Among the 1,035 articles, the top three high-yield years were 2018 (n = 122), 2016 (n = 120), and 2017 (n = 105). Through co-citation analysis, TOP 10 clusters were obtained (respectively, BTEX, VOCs, indoor air, radon, indoor chemistry, VOC, photocatalytic oxidation, urinary metabolites of volatile organic compounds, fungal volatiles and nitrogen dioxide). Then, by constructing co-occurrence network of keywords, we revealed that "exposure" and "emissions" are two hotspots in the literature examined. Also, the results demonstrated that USA is the leading country (n = 294) and TSINGHUA UNIV. is the leading institution (n = 24). Moreover, the top three popular journals publishing the topic on health effects of VOCs were identified, respectively Atmos. Environ., Environ. Sci. Technol. and Indoor Air.Notably, in the literature examined, the most common diseases potentially associated with VOCs are mainly involved in the respiratory system, blood system and inflammation.Therefore, this study assessed publications on health effects of VOCs using bibliometric approaches, which provided the research status and trends of the topic and potential hints to future investigation in this field.
