Airborne metals particulate matter

Airborne particulate matter may be associated with many carcinogenic and other toxic agents. Hazardous materials include coal dust, fly-ash from power stations, metals and metal oxides from mining, extraction and refining and materials used as catalysts in industrial processes, as well as particulate matter from, for example, diesel exhausts. 

Zereini F, Alt F, Messerschmidt J, Wiseman C, Feldmann I, Von Bohlen A, Muller J, Liebl K, Piittmann W (2005) Concentration distribution of heavy metals in urban airborne particulate matter in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Environ Sci Technol 39(9) 2983-2989... 

FujiwaraFG, Gomez DR, Dawidowski L, Perelman P, Faggi A (2011) Metals associated with airborne particulate matter in road dust and free bark collected in a megacity (Buenos Aires, Argentina). Ecol Indie ll(2) 240-247. 

Samara C et al (1990) Characterization of airborne particulate matter in Thessaloniki, Greece. 1. Source related heavy-metal concentrations within TSP. Toxicol Environ Chem 29 107-119... 

Samara, C., and Voutsa, D. (2005). Size distribution of airborne particulate matter and associated heavy metals in the roadside environment. Chemosphere 59,1197-1206. 

Often, many simultaneously occurring pollutants or contaminants determine an environmental problem. In industry, agriculture, and households, products are often mixtures of many compounds. The process of production and consumption is accompanied by emissions and consequently by contamination. One example is the use of toxaphene in the past, a very complex mixture of polychlorinated camphenes, as a pesticide. Technical toxaphene consists of more than 175 individual compounds. A second example is industrial and domestic emissions resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels. The emissions contain both a mixture of gases (SO2, NOx, CO2, etc.) and airborne particulate matter which itself contains a broad range of heavy metals and also polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). 

CRM for road dust (BCR-723) containing 81.3 2.5 Jg/kg Pt, 6.1 1.9 ig/ kg Pd, and 12.8 1.3 Jg/kg Rh, was introduced [49, 228]. It is widely used for quality control of results obtained in the analysis of environmental materials (e.g., airborne particulate matters, dusts, soils, and sediments). Comparison of results obtained using different analytical procedures and interlaboratory studies are recommended when there is a lack of suitable CRM (e.g., in examination of clinical samples). The use of standards based on real matrices (e.g., saliva, plasma, ultrafiltrates, and lung fluids) instead of synthetic solutions is recommended in such analyses. Difficulties with the identification and quantification of different metal species in examined samples make the reliability of results of great importance. The use of various instrumental techniques for examination of particular samples can be helpful. The application of chromatography, mass spectrometry, and electrochemistry [199] HPLC ICP MS and HPLC MS/MS [156] ESI MS and MALDI [162] micellar electrokinetic chromatography, NMR, and MS [167] AAS, ESI MS, and CD spectroscopy [179] SEC IC ICP MS and EC ESI MS [180] and NMR and HPLC [229] are examples of such approaches. 

The collection and analysis of airborne metal components encountered in air is categorized by physical state. Mercury, lead, and manganese are considered as metallic elements which can be found as components of ambient air. No examples are given for the liquid state. Attention is focused on particulate matter and its trace metal constituents—methods of evaluation considered include AAS, NAA, SS/MS, OES, XRF, and XRD, Elemental compositional levels and ranges of metals are considered. Fluctuations in the composition of samples taken at a site at differing times are noted concen-trational differences between sites can vary by 10 . 

Intuitively, one expects that trace metal analysis will involve collection and analysis of particulate matter. It is convenient to consider the collection and analysis of airborne species for the elemental determination... 

Although these tools can help characterize the chemical composition of airborne particles in detail and with sensitivity never before possible, it is easy to generate an enormous amount of data which can literally swamp the environmental scientist. He is now faced with a new problem which concerns the selective analysis of airborne particulate matter that can provide the most useful information within the constraints of his resources. The question can be stated more simply what are the environmentally important trace metals ... 

Efforts have been made over the past several years to identify airborne metals with specific emission sources by the use of enrichment factors, and by comparing the trace element profile of airborne particles with characteristic components in particulate matter from various sources. Measurements of particle size and the application of sophisticated statistical techniques should increase the accuracy of these "fingerprinting approaches. 

Ultrasonic extraction is especially efficient with environmental and industrial hygiene samples however, in addition to the inapplicability to the extraction of some metals and the inability to quantitatively extract heavy metals from very large bulk environmental samples [14,15], ultrasounds occasionally produce ionic species that were absent from the original sample. The new species give unidentified signals that yield spurious analytical results such is the case with the extraction of ionic species from airborne particulate matter [23], where the new ions formed prevent accurate determination of those initially present in the sample. 

Despite the clear evidence of a subpopulation of individuals sensitive to near-ambient peak levels of sulfur dioxide, the two-decade-old NAAQS for sulfur dioxide has not been changed nor has a short-term peak standard been instituted. A considerably greater amount of attention has been placed on the contribution of airborne particulates, particularly those associated with sulfur oxides, to adverse health effects. The carbon-, mineral-, and heavy metal-based particles produced during fossil fuel combustion and smelting promote the conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid. Recognition of sulfur dioxide-particle interactions comes as a result of findings garnered from a number of animal studies and the characterization of sulfuric acid, ammonium sulfate, and ammonium bisulfate associated with atmospheric particles. The importance of the coexistence of sulfur oxides and particulate matter is reflected in the... 

As discussed in Chapter 7, polluted air varies in composition from locale to locale and with the time of day and meteorological conditions in a given locale. Polluted urban air contains oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, carbon monoxide, ozone, uncombusted and partially combusted hydrocarbons from gasoline and diesel vehicles, and particulate matter. PM 2.5 particulates, the standard for evaluating pollution related to cardiovascular disease, are composed of combustion products, airborne soil, sulfates, nitrates, and heavy metals as listed in Table 29.4.141-45 ... 

Temporal trends of the ambient concentration and deposition flux of particulate trace metals are now available for various sites (Pirrone etal. 1995 Var etal. 2000 Kemp 2002). From their measurements at seven urban sites across the metropolitan area of Detroit in the 1982-1992 time period, Pirrone et al. (1995) reported downward trends for Fe, Pb, Cr, Cd and Be, and an upward trend for Zn, Ni and Hg. As was reported for lead concentrations in ice layers (Boutron et al. 1995) and peat bogs (Shotyk et al. 1996), a significant reduction of the Pb content in airborne particulate matter was observed in the past two decades at different urban sites in Denmark (Kemp 2002). 

ScHUTYSER P, Govaert A, Dams R and Hosts J (1977) Neutron activation analysis of platinum metals in airborne particulate matter. J Radioanal Chem 37 651-660. 

According to a number of studies are the particles emitted from motor vehicles made up of mineral oxides, soot, numerous organic compounds, a variety of metals and metal compounds and water (Puxbaum et al. 2000). The inorganic ions sulfate, nitrate and ammonium, which were normally major constituents of airborne particulate matter, were also found in particulate vehicle emissions, but only to a minor degree since these compounds were primary formed by gas-to-particle conversion processes of gaseous precursor substances. 

Metals and Organic Compounds in Airborne Particulate Matter Analytical Methods... 

Zereini F, Alt F, Messerschmidt J, von Bohlen A, Liebl K, Piittmann W (2004) Concentration and distribution of platinum group elements (Pt, Pd, Rh) in aiibome particulate matter in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Env Sci Technol 38 1686-1692 Zereini F, Alt F, Messerschmidt J, Wiseman C, Feldmann 1, von Bohlen A, Muller J, Liebl K, Piittmann W (2005) Concentration and particle size distribution of toad-specific heavy metals in urban airborne particulate matter. Env Sci Technol 39 2983-2989 Zhao Z, Preiser H (1986) Differential pulse polarographic determination of trace levels of platinum. Anal Chem 58 1498-1501... 

In this paper, we present a procedure for the direct quantification of metal concentrations on PMio filters using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). This technique combines the high sensitivity of ICP-MS direct solid sampling by laser ablation (Durrant 1999 Gunther and Hattendorf 2005). LA-ICP-MS has previously been used for the determination of trace element and their distribution in airborne particulate matter collected on... 

Cellulose filters (Whatman 41, Whatman, USA) were selected for this study because of their low intrinsic metal content and hygroscopic character (Dams et al. 1972). These filters are widely used in a range of applications including filtering of solutions and airborne particulate matter collection. The cellulose filters used for this work have a dimension of 20 x 25 cm 2 x 1 cm sections were cut using stainless steel scissors to fit in the sample cell of the LA system. 

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