Direct and rapid analysis of ambient air and exhaled air via electrostatic precipitation of aerosols in an atomizer furnace and Zeeman spectrometry.

Techniques that allow the elements present in the air to be determined in a simple and rapid manner are very attractive. Direct aerosol sampling techniques avoid the need to pretreat the filter via wet digestion in order to remove any sources of contamination, and they decrease the precipitation time significantly. Analyzers based on this technique can also determine the concentrations of elements in the air automatically in situ. This paper is concerned with the development of a novel analytical system that is based on electrostatically precipitating aerosols from the air into a graphite furnace. The equipment includes a Zeeman spectrometer with high frequency modulation polarization (MGA-915), and an electrostatic precipitation system incorporated into the analyzer. The high sensitivity of the system developed here means that it can be used to determine element concentrations in the air exhaled by humans, as well as those in ambient air.