Green Portable Method for Simultaneous Investigation of Gaseous and Particle-Bound Air Pollutants in Indoor and Outdoor Environments

Abstract

The comprehensive study of air samples can be challenging, as air pollution is often aerosol/particle based. The presence of chemical pollutants in gas phase and particle form means that multiple methods must be used to ensure a comprehensive investigation, which can make such endeavors very expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and time consuming. To address this issue, a needle-trap device (NTD) was packed with commercial sorbents and a thermally stable porous filter to enable the simultaneous extraction of gaseous compounds and trapping the particles, respectively. In addition, gas-phase pollutants were extracted using solid-phase microextraction methods to distinguish free concentrations from particle-bound components. The methods were applied to analyze the presence of pollutants in parking lots; smokes from candles, cigarettes, and incense; and mosquito repellant. The extracted compounds were quantified using both benchtop and portable gas chromatography−mass spectrometry. The developed methods are solventless, fast, and portable, and the resulting data for all methods indicated high reproducibility, reliability, and sensitivity, with detection limits as low as 10 ng L −1 . The critical assessments regarding the principles of green and white analytical chemistries were performed. The high scores obtained using the dedicated evaluation tools (Analytical GREEnness Metric Approach and Software (AGREE) and RGB 12) confirm their environmental friendliness and functionality. The concentration of pollutants captured by the filter-incorporated NTDs was significantly higher compared to the concentrations obtained in the gas phase by both solid-phase microextraction-based methods, thus indicating that substantial amounts of contaminants are transported via particles.