A sol-gel based solid phase microextraction fiber for headspace sampling (HP-SPME) and GC determination of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX) is introduced. The influences of fiber composition., microextraction conditions such as temperature and time on the fiber performance and desorption temperature and time were investigated. Under optimal conditions, the use of proposed fiber was thermally stable up to 250 degrees C and demonstrated high sensitive and fast sampling of BTEX from gaseous phase. Depending on the analysed substance, the linear range for a selected fiber and the applied GC-FID technique was from 4 to 80 ng mL(-1) with limit of detection (LOD) 0.2-0.7 ng mL(-1) and 100-1000 ng mL(-1) with LOD 8-20 ng mL(-1) for gaseous and soil samples, respectively. HP-SPME-GC analysis was highly reproducible-relative standard deviations (R.S.D.) were between 5.0 and 7.9%. The proposed fiber was successfully used for BTEX sampling from indoor air and headspace of soil samples. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.