Air Monitoring of Persistent Organic Pollutants Using Passive Air Samplers

The monitoring of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the atmosphere is a basis for the study of the fate of POPs in multimedia environments. Recently, passive air samplers (PASs) for POPs have been developed. In this paper, we deal with the principle, properties, and applications of the PAS. The principle of PAS, which has no pump, is physical sorption of semi volatile organic chemicals on various sorbent materials. The PAS is much smaller than a high volume air sampler and does not need electricity. These properties of the PAS make it possible to conduct various scaled environmental monitoring all over the world including the Arctic and Antarctic, but the major disadvantage of PAS is its long sampling periods up to 2 years. To date, four kinds of PAS have been developed: polyurethane foam (PUF), polymer coated glass (POG), semi permeable membrane devices (SPMDs), and XAD resin based PAS. Among them, SPMDs have been commercialized and are most widely used now. Meanwhile, the POPs emitted from China have a large potential to influence the levels and fates of POPs in Korea. Since characteristics of PAS are quite useful to monitor long range transport of POPs, the use of PAS is highly recommended.