Calculation Method for the Concentration of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) Collected by Passive Air Samplers

Passive air samplers (PAS) have been developed since the early 2000s and widely used for the atmospheric monitoring of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). PAS are useful especially for the investigation of source-receptor relationship of POPs because they provide higher spatial resolution data. In Korea, however, only a few research groups have conducted POPs monitoring using PAS. One of the reasons for the limited application of PAS might be due to a complicated calculation method for air concentration. In this study, therefore, we introduced the principle of polyurethane foam (PUF)-PAS, which has been most widely used in the world, and provided an example of the calculation of air concentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). As all data tables and equations for this calculation were provided, this method can be used for the conversion of the amount of POPs (ng) in a PUF disk to air concentration (ng/m(3)).