DETERMINATION OF POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC HYDROCARBONS IN THE ATMOSPHERIC AIR OF LARGE INDUSTRIAL CITIES
The intensive development of urbanized areas has led to the aggravation of environmental problems associated with chemical, physical and biological pollution of the urban environment. Solving the problem of ensuring environmental safety and sustainable development of urbanized territories and areas with a high load of industrial facilities and transport is associated with the conduct of state sanitary and epidemiological supervision over the quality of the environment. A high danger to the health of the population of large industrial cities is the presence in the atmospheric air of a wide range of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) - toxic compounds that are always present in urban aerosol solid particles. Being persistent organic pollutants, PAHs cause carcinogenic, teratogenic and mutagenic changes in the body. In that regard, an urgent task is to monitor PAHs in environmental objects. In order to identify the sources of PAHs entering the atmospheric air of cities, to determine the qualitative and quantitative composition of PAHs as part of the development of measures to ensure environmental safety, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are monitored in many countries. In the Russian Federation and abroad, methods of high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorimetric and spectrometric detection, capillary gas chromatography with mass spectrometric detection are currently most in demand for monitoring the PAHs content in atmospheric air. A review of methods for the quantitative determination of PAHs in atmospheric air in the territories of large industrial cities showed that the choice of an analytical method depends on the qualitative and quantitative composition of the analyzed air. In the process of performing the analytical procedure, it is necessary to take into account the negative and positive artifacts associated with the stage of sampling and storage of samples, preparation of samples for analysis, accurate identification and selectivity of determination.