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C. Herzig, K. Peikert, A. Kasper-Giebl, A. Limbeck:
"LA-ICP-MS for the direct analysis of airborne particulate matter";
Poster: 2020 Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, Tucson, Arizona, US; 13.01.2020 - 18.01.2020; in: "Winter Conference Abstracts", (2020), S. 1.

Airborne particulate matter (PM) is a term used for small solid particles suspended in air. Such airborne particles show various influences on the health of humans, local ecosystems and the global climate. These influences can be quite different depending on many physicochemical properties of such particles (size, shape, inorganic or organic composition).These particles can be anthropogenic or of natural origin. Sources for anthropogenic pollutants in air can be industry, traffic or domestic fire.
Globally the main sources of particles in the air are of natural origin like sea-spray or mineral dust. For central European countries mineral dust events are usually caused by strong winds, transporting particles from the Sahara at the African continent to Europe. For a better understanding of these complex and highly variable compositions, many different techniques for analysis are necessary. For determination of the inorganic components of PM, wet chemical analysis via inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry or optical emission spectrometry are methods of choice. Both techniques require digestion of the particles, which is usually achieved by microwave-assisted digestion to ensure quantitative sample dissolution. Although this procedure is well established and often used, major drawbacks like increased time demand, low sample throughput, high reagents consumption, possible contamination and analyte losses remain. To overcome these drawbacks, a new approach for multi-element analysis of such PM samples via laser ablation - inductively coupled plasma - mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) was published recently.
In this contribution we present the application of this direct solid sampling approach for the quantification of inorganic constituents in size segregated PM samples collected at the Sonnblick Observatory in Austria. Samples were continuously taken over a period of 2 years´ time. In this measurement series samples with and without Sahara dust events are analyzed and the content of inorganic components in the PM samples is determined. The specific composition of metals as well as P and Si in these samples allows clear distinction between samples taken during a mineral dust event or not.

LA-ICP-MS, quantitative analysis, particulate matter