Natural organic matter atmospheric particles

However, LFERs of the type of Eq. 3-56 may not only be used as predictive tools they may also serve other purposes. For example, they may be very helpful to check reported experimental data for consistency (i.e., to detect experimental errors). They may also enable us to discover unexpected partitioning behavior of a given compound, for example, if a compound is an outlier, but, based on its structure, is expected to fit the LFER. Finally, as will be discussed in various other chapters, if for a given set of model compounds such LFERs have been established for various two-phase systems, where one of the phases is not very well characterized (e.g., various natural organic matter-water systems, different atmospheric particle-air systems), the slopes a of the respective LFERs may yield some important information on the nature of the phases considered (e.g., to detect differences or similarities among the phases). 

Organic compounds, natural, fossil or anthropogenic, can be used to provide a chemical mass balance for atmospheric particles and a receptor model was developed that relates source contributions to mass concentrations in airborne fine particles. The approach uses organic compound distributions in both source and ambient samples to determine source contributions to the airborne particulate matter. This method was validated for southern California and is being applied in numerous other airsheds. ... 

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