Source identification of urban airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons by gas chromatographic mass spectrometry and high resolution mass spectrometry

Abstract

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons formed during the combustion of three common fuels (coal, wood and kerosene) were separated and identified by capillary-column gas chromatographic mass spectrometry and were compared to airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from Indianapolis, a high coal consuming area, and Boston, a low coal consuming area. High resolution mass spectral data were utilized in the construction of alkyl homolog plots for the comparison of alkyl distribution within each sample.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons contamination in subsoil from outskirts of Beijing, People's Republic of China

“…Moreover, at low to moderate temperature, as in the wood stove (Lake et al, 1979), or as from the combustion of coal (Laflamme and Hites, 1978), low molecular weight parent PAH compounds are abundant. At high temperature, such as in the vehicle emissions, the high molecular weight parent PAHs compounds are dominant (Lee et al, 1977). Samples from the outskirts of Beijing exhibited significantly higher fraction of high molecular weight PAHs, suggesting the pyrolysis at high temperature such as vehicle emission was the predominated source in subsoil.…”

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Contents of Coral and Surface Sediments off the South Texas Coast of the Gulf of Mexico

“…PAH's are widely distributed in the air, water, sediments, and living organisms throughout the world (Aizenshtat, 1973;LaFlamme & Hites, 1978;Wakeham, Schaffner, & Giger, 1980;Coates, Connel, Bordero, Miller, & Back, 1986;Kennicutt, Sericano, Wade, Alcazar, & Brooks, 1987;Lamparczyk, Ochocka, Gryzbowski, Halkiewicz, & Radecki, 1988;El-Sikaily, Khaled, Nemr, Said, & Abd-Alla, 2003;Olson, Iverson, Edward, & Schroeder, 2003). Early studies determined that some compounds, such as perylene, retene, and permethrin, may be derived through the digenesis of biogenetic precursors, while most other PAHs are introduced into the atmosphere via incomplete combustion of fuels, industrial activities, accidental oil spills, and natural oil seepage (National Academy of Science, 1972;Lee, Prado, Howard, & Heits, 1977;Wakeham et al, 1980;Tan & Heit, 1981;Gschwend & Hites, 1981;Silliman et al, 2000). Concentrations of these compounds have been increasing throughout the last century due to enhanced anthropogenic activities such as industrialization, oil and natural gas exploration, etc.…”

Selective Fluorescence Detection of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Other Airborne Particles

“…Several fluorescence wavelength programs were developed by other research groups to quantitate PAHs [16-181. However, none of these programs were reported to quantitate alkyl-PAHs simultaneously with parent compounds. Although this is not usually a problem for PAH samples collected in outdoor air in U.S. cities [5,19], indoor air is frequently impacted by ETS which contains alkyl-PAHs at levels similar to those of the parent compounds. A few of the reported methods were tested only on the synthetic mixtures, but real world samples are considerably more complex.…”