Green Portable Method for Simultaneous Investigation of Gaseous and Particle-Bound Air Pollutants in Indoor and Outdoor Environments

The comprehensive study of air samples
can be challenging, as air
pollution is often aerosol/particle based. The presence of chemical
pollutants in gas phase and particle form means that multiple methods
must be used to ensure a comprehensive investigation, which can make
such endeavors very expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and time
consuming. To address this issue, a needle-trap device (NTD) was packed
with commercial sorbents and a thermally stable porous filter to enable
the simultaneous extraction of gaseous compounds and trapping the
particles, respectively. In addition, gas-phase pollutants were extracted
using solid-phase microextraction methods to distinguish free concentrations
from particle-bound components. The methods were applied to analyze
the presence of pollutants in parking lots; smokes from candles, cigarettes,
and incense; and mosquito repellant. The extracted compounds were
quantified using both benchtop and portable gas chromatography–mass
spectrometry. The developed methods are solventless, fast, and portable,
and the resulting data for all methods indicated high reproducibility,
reliability, and sensitivity, with detection limits as low as 10 ng
L–1. The critical assessments regarding the principles
of green and white analytical chemistries were performed. The high
scores obtained using the dedicated evaluation tools (Analytical GREEnness
Metric Approach and Software (AGREE) and RGB 12) confirm their environmental
friendliness and functionality. The concentration of pollutants captured
by the filter-incorporated NTDs was significantly higher compared
to the concentrations obtained in the gas phase by both solid-phase
microextraction-based methods, thus indicating that substantial amounts
of contaminants are transported via particles.