Calculation of passive sampling rates from both native PCBs and depuration compounds in indoor and outdoor environments

Abstract

Passive sampling has become a practical way of sampling persistent organic pollutants over large spatial and remote areas; however, its ease in use is also coupled with some uncertainty in calculating air concentrations from accumulated mass. Here we report a comparison study of polyurethane-foam-based passive samplers (PUF-PAS) for quantitatively determining the sampling rates of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from air. We measured both uptake of native PCBs and loss of depuration compounds and determined the sampling rates ( R-values) for multiple samplers harvested at three different time periods. The uptake of native PCBs in the linear phase was similar to the loss of depuration compounds for indoor air and behaved as predicted. A single R-value of 2.6 m 3 d −1 was calculated from the mean of 12 samplers deployed indoors from three harvest dates with a range of 2.0–3.4 m 3 d −1 for both uptake of native PCBs and loss of depuration compounds. Loss of depuration compounds in outdoor air also followed the predicted linear behavior with a range of calculated R-value of 4.4–8.4 m 3 d −1. Uptake of native PCBs behavior was extremely variable, probably due to changes in ambient air concentrations and resulted in R-values of 1.6–11.5 m 3 d −1 with greater variation seen in higher chlorinated homolog groups.