Abstract
The Northern Front Range Air Quality Study (NFRAQS) was the latest and most ambitious of a series of efforts to apportion sources of carbonaceous aerosol “soot” in the Denver, Colorado metropolitan area. The study was mandated by the Colorado State Legislature as a result of the continuing impact of aerosol carbon on visibility in the region. Apportionment of fossil and biomass carbon was based on blank-corrected values of carbon mass concentrations (μg/m 3) and 14C data ( f M, fraction of modern carbon) of a selected subset of the samples collected in conjunction with this program. Over 100 14C measurements were made on size segregated (⩽2.5 μm diameter) atmospheric aerosol samples collected during the summer of 1996 and the winter of 1996–1997. The reported f M values required correction for both the mass and f M of the overall carbon blank. Lack of direct f M data for the field blanks had a substantial effect on the estimated uncertainty of the final results, and in a few of the most extreme cases blank-corrected f M data had to be designated as “indeterminate”. Blank correction procedures and limitations will be illustrated with quantitative data from the NFRAQS study.
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