Interest in the global tropospheric chemistry of organic materials has been growing rapidly over the past decade. In addition to a basic concern about the fundamental biogeochemical cycles of organic matter, this interest has arisen largely because of concern about the oxidant‐forming potential of natural hydrocarbons, the possible importance of nonmethane hydrocarbons as a source for atmospheric CO, and the role played by organic material in the formation of secondary aerosol particles. In this review we consider the information presently available on concentration distribution, sources, sinks, and atmospheric transformation reactions of organic matter in the global troposphere. The data base for tropospheric organic compounds is very small. However, it is apparent that while anthropogenic sources often dominate the atmospheric chemistry of organic material in urban and near‐urban air, a key to understanding the global cycling of tropospheric organic substances is a clear understanding of the interaction of the atmosphere with the terrestrial and marine biosphere.

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The extraction of organic compounds from airborne particulate matter, obtained by glass fiber filtration, has been studied with different solvents and has been followed as a function of time.For many compounds, almost quantitative extraction was obtained after 8h. Polyaromatic hydrocarbons and polar compounds often yielded higher extraction efficiencies with methanol than with benzene.The gas chromatographic mass spectrometric determination of these compounds is somewhat simplified by a separation of the sample into neutral, acidic and basic fractions.The efficiency of this procedure was tested on a mixture of compounds representative for the actual aerosol composition. It was concluded that the basic fraction yielded poor results.The techniques for these measurements included quantitative gas chromatography with electronic integration for standard mixtures and quantitative mass chromatography for natural sample extracts.