Evaluation of passive methods for measuring ozone in the European Alps

Abstract

The on-line monitoring of atmospheric pollutants in air quality networks requires expensive and sophisticated measurement techniques. The application of passive samplers that have a smaller temporal resolution is useful for measuring the spatial distribution of atmospheric pollutants. Moreover, passive samplers have a strong advantage in remote areas where electrical power is not available. In recent years a great variety of passive sampler types have been used for several pollutants. In 1991 and 1992, the GSF Forschungszentrum für Umwelt und Gesundheit invited various research groups to make their ozone and nitrogen oxide sampling systems available for comparative testing. It was considered valuable to include not only well established systems but also methods still being developed. For the main comparative test six working groups with different methods took part. The main goal was to evaluate the integrating ozone measuring methods in comparison with on-line ozone monitoring techniques under field conditions. For this reason a large number of collection systems at six alpine measuring stations in Italy and Bavaria characterizing different location types were compared over 22 weeks.