| Abstract
| - Responding to a growing need for inexpensive and simplemonitoring of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) inthe atmosphere, a passive air sampling technique basedon the sorption of gaseous pollutants to the sampling resinXAD-2, a styrene−divinylbenzene copolymer, has beendeveloped. A quantitative understanding of the uptake kineticsof the passive air samplers (PAS) was obtained througha combination of field calibration studies, controlled windtunnel experiments, and flow field simulations. Forty-two PAS were deployed for varying time periods up to 1yr at three calibration stations in the Laurentian Great Lakesregion and the Canadian High Arctic with ongoingconventional air sampling of organochlorine pesticides.The PAS take up quantifiable levels of POPs within a fewweeks of deployment, and the amount of chemicalcollected increases steadily over a 1-yr sampling period.The uptake of POPs by the PAS is controlled by moleculardiffusion and independent of wind velocity. The time-averaged air concentrations of organochlorine pesticidesderived from the PAS data are comparable with thosefrom HiVol sampling. This study suggests that the XAD-2 resin-based PAS can be used to derive at least semiquantitativeinformation on the vapor-phase concentrations of POPsin the atmosphere and are suitable for the measurementsof long-term average concentrations at the levelsoccurring in remote regions.
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