Development of Complete ex vacuo Ion Beam Analysis and its Application to Indoor and Outdoor Environment Dust Samples

The escalating duration of time spent indoors over recent decades has resulted in prolonged exposure to environmental pollutants within indoor spaces. While efforts to measure indoor pollutants have been underway, most existing methods are characterized by substantial expenses or protracted measurement durations. This dissertation addresses these challenges by proposing a method suitable for assessing both indoor and outdoor dusts and soils, thereby facilitating widespread screening of indoor environments for potential pollutants.

The devised approach to achieve this objective is the ex vacuo Ion Beam Analysis (IBA), characterized by its rapid measurement time of 3 minutes and cost-effectiveness attributed to the straightforward sample preparation required. This methodology has been applied to three distinct sample sets, encompassing an XRF vacuum dust study conducted in Marion County, Indiana, a Reddit vacuum dust survey spanning the state of Indiana, and a road dust collection initiative from Lake County, Indiana.

In addition to the innovative measurement technique, the sampling approach employed in the Reddit survey involved harnessing the collective efforts of online volunteers who submitted their vacuum dust samples for analysis. This presents an opportunity to expand the realm of citizen science, concurrently mitigating sample collection costs by necessitating only the purchase of postage and envelopes as opposed to physically visiting each collection site.

近年来，室内活动时间的不懈增长导致人们在室内空间中长时间暴露于环境污染物的危害之下。尽管测量室内污染物的努力一直在进行，但大多数现有方法均以高昂的成本或漫长的测量时间为特点。本论文针对这些挑战，提出了一种适用于评估室内和室外尘埃及土壤的方法，从而促进对室内环境潜在污染物的广泛筛查。

实现该目标的设计方案为真空离子束分析（IBA），其以3分钟的快速测量时间和简便的样本制备所需的成本效益而著称。该方法已应用于三个不同的样本集，包括在印第安纳州马里恩县进行的XRF真空尘埃研究、横跨印第安纳州的Reddit真空尘埃调查以及来自印第安纳州湖县的公路尘埃收集活动。

除了创新的测量技术外，Reddit调查中采用的采样方法涉及利用在线志愿者的集体力量，他们提交了他们的真空尘埃样本以供分析。这为扩展公民科学领域提供了机会，同时通过仅需要购买邮资和信封，而不是亲自访问每个收集点，从而降低了样本收集成本。