Development of passive sampler technique for ozone monitoring. Estimation of indoor and outdoor ozone concentration

A passive sampler method has been developed for ozone monitoring. The method involves a badge type passive sampler and is applied to the analysis of ozone exposure as an indoor and outdoor air pollutants. The passive sampler used in this experiment consists of glass fiber filter coated with NaNO2, Na2CO3 and ethylene glycol, and diffusion filter to remove the wind effects and several spacer effects. The principle component of coating is nitrite ion, which in the presence of ozone is oxidized to nitrate ion on the filter medium and then analyzed by ion chromatography. The results from laboratory and field tests show excellent correlation between the passive method and standard ozone monitoring system, integrated over the same time period. The wind tunnel parameters that were examined show that determination of relative humidity (ranging from 30 to 80%), temperature (ranging from 10 to 20 degreesC and wind velocity ( ranging from 0.5 to 1.5 m s(-1)) at typical ozone levels (1-40 ppb) do not influence sampler performance. The detection limit attained 0.1 ppb is adequate for the determination of ozone in indoor and outdoor areas. A statistical comparison with a reference method was done in order to demonstrate the validation of the developed method. The accuracy of the proposed method, expressed as a percent relative error, when compared with a standard reference method, is found to be better than about +/- 3.5%. The standard errors of the difference was measured in terms of relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) and it was found that the R.S.D. of the passive sampler for O-3 sampler ranged from 2.0 to 6.0%. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.