Conditional Sampling of Passive Samplers: Application to the Measurement of 8 h Ozone and Nitrogen Dioxide Concentration

Download PDFsettingsOrder Article Reprints Open AccessArticle Conditional Sampling of Passive Samplers: Application to the Measurement of 8 h Ozone and Nitrogen Dioxide Concentration by Ivo Allegrini 1,*,Cinzia Perrino 2ORCID,Elena Rantica 2 andFederica Valentini 3ORCID 1 Envint Srl, Via Paradiso 65a, Montopoli di Sabina, 02434 Rieti, Italy 2 CNR (National Research Council), Institute for Atmospheric Pollution Research, Monterotondo St., 00015 Roma, Italy 3 Department of Chemistry, University “Tor Vergata”, 00133 Rome, Italy * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Air 2024, 2(3), 209-219; https://doi.org/10.3390/air2030012 Submission received: 27 April 2024 / Revised: 11 June 2024 / Accepted: 17 June 2024 / Published: 21 June 2024 (This article belongs to the Topic Accessing and Analyzing Air Quality and Atmospheric Environment) Downloadkeyboard_arrow_down Browse Figures Review Reports Versions Notes Abstract Passive samplers have long been used to measure atmospheric pollutants in both indoor and outdoor environments. They are simple to operate, and can now monitor several chemical species. However, their use is limited because they usually require a long exposition time and provide a mean value that cannot control or evidence expected or non-expected events of environmental significance. A new apparatus specifically developed for exposing Analyst© passive samplers has been used to monitor ozone and nitrogen dioxide by automatically selecting a sampling duration of 8 h, as most legislation requires. The instrument was designed to accumulate ozone or NO2 in one passive sampler for 8 h over each day, and in another passive sampler for the remaining hours. This allows for a long-time accumulation of the 8 h ozone or nitrogen dioxide in a dedicated sampler. Measurements were carried out NE of Rome at a rural site. A description of the experiments is given, with special emphasis on the quality controls. Very low uncertainties and good comparability of the data with the reference methods were obtained for both pollutants.