A comparison of PAMS and air toxics measurements

One of the requirements of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAA) is that 1-h ozone nonattainment areas that are classified severe or higher category are required to operate a network of photochemical assessment monitors (PAMS) to provide hourly measurements of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) comprising of Carbon number <12 (C2–C12), along with carbonyl measurements at 3-h intervals during the summer ozone season. Often collocated with PAMS are 24-h-integrated canister and cartridge-based measurements of selected air toxic compounds, thereby providing an opportunity for inter-comparison and validation of both sets of data. In this study, we report such a comparison and estimates of trend for benzene, m-, p- and o-xylene, toluene, ethylbenzene, 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde at Bronx, NY. The analysis shows that hourly PAMS and 24-h-integrated air toxics are in good agreement with each other exhibiting similar trends and that the PAMS with the higher temporal resolution offers information on excursions of the toxic compounds that would be quite useful in assessment of acute health effects. These findings were also found to be applicable to other locations such as South De Kalb, GA; Gary, IN and Lynn, MA.