Development of characterization procedure of particulate matter pollution collected in immediate vicinity of urban residents

Abstract

Advantage of using individual dust meters over traditional stationary particulate matter (PM) air pollution monitoring is evaluated. Data of air pollution levels obtained from the three municipal stationary monitoring stations were compared with data of individual dust meters SidePak AM 510. Results of a few control series of this comparison have indicated important differences between the mentioned two types of synchronised measurements. Taking into account that vast majority of time people spend indoors, one may expect that individual samplers better characterise exposition of any human being on the PM urban pollution. As a result, a new sampling procedure is proposed. It allows the collection of particulate matter in the immediate vicinity of human being: As collectors of the PM, we propose mobile phones, accompanying people whatever is their everyday activity. Namely, dust deposited in the inner parts of the used mobile phones is extracted and analysed. The procedure consists of bulk analysis performed with spark source mass spectrometry (SSMS) and depth profile analysis made by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). Exemplary results are presented of the particulate material deposited on high purity indium foils. Ion erosion is done with 5 keV Ar+, 150‐µm diameter ion beam scanned over 2 × 2.5 mm area. The analyser is equipped with Physical Electronics ion gun and QMA‐410 Balzers quadrupole mass spectrometer. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.