Seasonal and diurnal variations of atmospheric concentrations of phenols and nitrophenols measured in the Strasbourg area, France

Atmospheric sampling (gas and particle-phases) of phenols and nitrophenols (PNP) were performed between 2002 and 2004 in Strasbourg (east of France) and its vicinity. Sites were chosen to be representative of urban (Strasbourg), suburban (Schiltigheim) and rural (Erstein) conditions. Field campaigns were undertaken simultaneously in urban and suburban and urban and rural sites during three seasons on glass fibre filters and XAD-2 resin by using high volume samplers. Concentrations of compounds were determined by analysis with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) after a sylilation step using N-methyl-N-tert-butyldimethylsilyl-trifluoroacetamide (MtBSTFA) reagent. Mean total concentrations varied between 21.1 ng m(-3) for the rural site, 23.5 ng m(-3) for the suburban site, and 25.2 ng m(-3) for the urban site. At the three sites, the most abundant compounds of those measured were phenol, followed by 4-methyl-2-nitrophenol for the rural site and by 2,4-dinitrophenol for the urban and suburban sites. In terms of concentrations, there was negligible difference between the three sites, independently of the seasons considered. On the other hand, a difference in concentrations has been observed between the three sites according to the periods of sampling, especially during the spring. The observed diurnal variations of compounds in warm period (spring) were essentially dependent of the vehicle circulation. In cold period (fall and winter), it seemed that the contribution of domestic heating influence the diurnal variations of some compounds in rural site while for the two other sites (urban and suburban), the intensity of the vehicle circulation seemed predominant. (C) Author(s) 2010. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.