Field evaluation of portable and central site PM samplers emphasizing additive and differential mass concentration estimates

Abstract

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) and the accompanying Federal Reference Method (FRM) for PM(10) in 1987. The EPA revised the particle standards and FRM in 1997 to include PM(2.5). In 2005, EPA proposed revisions to this NAAQS to include PM(10-2.5) but only finalized revisions with a PM(2.5) FRm and the development of a national monitoring network in 2006. Presently, no EPA designated reference or equivalent method sampler has the ability to directly measure the mass concentrations of PM(10), PM(10-2.5), and PM(2.5) simultaneously. An additive approach has been used for samplers like the dichotomous monitors to calculate PM(10) mass concentrations from independent measures of PM(10-2.5) and PM(2.5) (i.e. PM(10)= PM(10-2.5)+PM(2.5)). A differential approach has been used to calculate PM(10-2.5) from identical collocated PM(10) and PM(2.5) samplers (i.e. PM(10-2.5)= PM(10)-PM(2.5)). Since these two approaches have been used widely for PM measurements, it is informative to evaluate their precision and comparability. EPA performed collocated tests of five different particle samplers in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina to evaluate the comparability and to characterize the additive and differential approaches used to determine particle mass concentrations. The intra-sampler precision of MiniVol, Omni, and dichotomous samplers was less than 8.4%. The precision of PM(10) measurements using the additive approach with dichotomous samplers was less than 3.5%. The poorest precision of the various PM(10-2.5) differential approaches was less than 15.1%. No zero or negative PM(10-2.5) concentrations were calculated using the differential approach. A coefficient of determination of 0.81 or higher was obtained for all paired comparison of PM(10-2.5). The reported test results show that concentrations calculated from both the additive and differential approaches generally agree among the portable samplers, the more established dichotomous sampler and the Federal Reference Methods Published by Elsevier Ltd