Sampling of airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Limitations of NIOSH sampling method P and CAM 183 were defined for airborne standard mixtures of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) generated as vapors in a flow-through apparatus. The PAH fell into three categories: those that were too volatile to be collected by the NIOSH filtration method at normal ambient temperatures and were best sampled with Tenax or XAD-2 sorbent (i.e., indane, naphthalene, biphenyl, acenaphthene, fluorene, 9,10-dihydrophenanthrene, phenathrene, and anthracene); those that were quantitatively collected by filters, even after a brief airborne residence time (i.e., benz(a)anthracene, chrysene, benzo(a)pyrene, dibenz(a,h)anthracene, and benzo(ghi)perylene); and those that partitioned between filter and sorbent (i.e., fluoranthene and pyrene). A combination glass fiber/silver membrane filter backed by two sorbent tubes in series gave overall mean recoveries of 94-96% for the 15 PAH studied at total concentrations of, nominally, 0.2 and 0.02 mg/m/sup 3/. Individual PAH concentrations were 0.03-0.05 and 0.003-0.005 mg/m/sup 3/, respectively.

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