Environmental pollutants, characterizing mixtures

Lewtas J. 1993. Complex mixtures of air pollutants Characterizing the cancer risk of polycyclic organic matter. Environmental Health Perspectives 100 211-218. 

GC-MS is widely used for characterizing mixtures containing environmental pollutants. It is also used to analyze urine and hair samples for the presence of illegal drugs or banned substances thought to improve athletic performance. 

As previously indicated, in our functionalization studies, we have centered our attention on the vibrational characterization and detection of PAHs. They constitute a family of different chemical compounds with a condensed multibenzene structure. PAHs are important environmental pollutants formed during the incomplete burning of coal, oil and gas, or other organic substances like tobacco or charbroiled meat (79). PAHs can be found as a mixture of different related molecular compounds in air, soil and water due to both natural processes and the human activity. Because many of them have been reported to be strong carcinogens 20-23) it is important to find an effective and selective method for their trace analysis. 

Environmental assessment studies require characterization of PNAs in large numbers of samples over extended periods. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) have demonstrated their capability to provide specific information for samples containing complex mixtures of pollutants. The GC/MS and HPLC methods, however, require sophisticated and expensive instrumentation and elaborate experimental procedures. Two techniques, synchronous luminescence (SL) and room temperature phosphoresence (RTP), developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been applied to the work... 

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