The application of an open tubular trap in analysis of organic air pollutants M. Dudek, L. Wolska, M. Pilarczyk, B. Zygmunt, J. Namie  snik * Chemical Faculty, Technical University of Gda nsk (TUG), 11/12 G. Narutowicza Street, 80-952 Gda nsk, Poland Received 6 November 2001; received in revised form 16 April 2002; accepted 30 April 2002 Abstract The paper presents the studies on equilibrium trapping of organic air pollutants. A piece of a commercial capillary chromatographic column coated with polydimethylsiloxane was used for trapping. This kind of the trap was applied for sampling and enrichment of selected volatile nonpolar organic compounds from workplace atmosphere (woodworking shop). In the method developed, which is based on equilibrium trapping the concentration of analytes in a studied medium can be calculated from the partition coefficients determined in a calibration step and the amount of particular analytes trapped. Simultaneously with equilibrium trapping, analytes were sampled into sorbent packed tubes. The concen- trations of analytes in woodworking shop atmosphere obtained with both sampling methods (equilibrium and dynamic) were in good agreement. Ó 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Open tubular trap; Organic air pollutants; Isolation and enrichment; Partition coefficient 1. Introduction Most of the current instrumental analytical methods suitable for analysis of volatile organic compounds are not sufficiently sensitive to measure directly concentra- tion of volatile organic pollutants in a majority of air samples. That is why air contaminants must be enriched before the final analysis. Quite a few approaches are applied to sample of analytes from air (Przyk et al., 2000). In open tubular trap a gaseous sample is passed through the open capillary. The inside wall of the tube is coated with a material, which collects components of interest. First open tubular traps were tailor-made (Burger and Munro, 1986; Roeraade and Blomberg, 1989) later a piece of a capillary gas chromatographic column were used (Krieger and Hites, 1992; Tuan et al., 1997; Aguilar et al., 1999). The thermal stability of GC stationary phases allows collected analytes to be thermally desorbed from a trap after sampling. They can be desorbed directly into a GC column for analysis, which makes that dilution of the sample with solvent is avoided. Chances for sample cross-contamination and possible degradation are min- imized because intermediate sample handling steps are eliminated. The other advantages of using that kind of a trap are that even very volatile compounds can be en- riched at ambient temperature, a cryogenic refocusing step is not required (Blomberg and Roeraade, 1990) and only simple instrumentation is needed. The most important advantage of using open tubular traps coated with thermally stable phases is that solvent extraction is replaced by thermal desorption. Thus, this analyte isolation technique belongs to solvent-free tech- niques, which are friendly for human beings and envi- ronment (Namie  snik and Wardencki, 2000). Chemosphere 48 (2002) 913–918 www.elsevier.com/locate/chemosphere * Corresponding author. Fax: +48-58-347-26-94. E-mail address: chemanal@pg.gda.pl (J. Namie  snik). 0045-6535/02/$ - see front matter Ó 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0045-6535(02)00184-4