Organic compounds like flame retardants (FRs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are consistently found in both indoor and outdoor environments. There are many possible matrices for measurement of these compounds (e.g. indoor dust, air – passive and active air samples), but all methods have limitations, like the heterogeneous distribution of indoor dust, or noisy active air samplers. We used filters from building-wide heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) units to evaluate levels of PAHs, PCBs, OCPs and NFRs in indoor and outdoor environments, and to evaluate whether this method is feasible for screening semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs) in indoor and near-building outdoor environments. Detectable levels of FRs, PCBs, OCPs and PAHs were found, demonstrating that HVAC filters do collect SVOCs, with generally higher levels of PAHs in the incoming air filters and higher levels of PCBs, OCPs and FRs in the outgoing air filters. Levels of FRs, PCBs and OCPs in outgoing air were comparable to those measured using conventional active air sampling in the same building. The advantages of using HVAC filters are (1) integrated and homogeneous samples, as the whole building is sampled over typically a long timescale (months), and (2) samples are easy and cheap to collect and do not require prior deployment of samplers. The key disadvantage is that HVAC filters are not designed for analytical chemistry and thus the filter materials can have variable or unknown gas sorption and particle capture, and can have strong matrix effects during analysis.

中文翻译：

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新兴的研究者系列：空调过滤器作为室内和附近建筑空气中半挥发性有机化合物的采样器

在室内和室外环境中始终可以找到诸如阻燃剂（FRs），多氯联苯（PCBs），有机氯农药（OCP）和多环芳烃（PAHs）之类的有机化合物。有许多可能的矩阵可以测量这些化合物（例如室内灰尘，空气–被动和主动空气采样），但是所有方法都有局限性，例如室内灰尘的异质分布或嘈杂的主动空气采样器。我们使用了来自整个建筑的采暖，通风和空调（HVAC）单元的过滤器，以评估室内和室外环境中的PAH，PCB，OCP和NFR的水平，并评估该方法是否可用于筛选半挥发性有机化合物（SVOC）在室内和附近建筑物的室外环境中。发现了可检测水平的FR，PCB，OCP和PAH，这表明HVAC过滤器确实收集了SVOC，通常进风空气过滤器中的PAH含量较高，而出风过滤器中的PCB，OCP和FRs含量较高。阻燃剂水平 流出空气中的PCB和OCP与在同一建筑物中使用常规主动空气采样所测量的PCB和OCP相当。使用HVAC过滤器的优势在于（1）集成且均质的样本，因为整个建筑物通常需要较长的时间（数月）进行采样，并且（2）样本易于收集且价格便宜，并且不需要事先部署采样器。关键缺点是HVAC过滤器不是为分析化学而设计的，因此过滤器材料可能具有可变的或未知的气体吸附和颗粒捕获，并且在分析过程中可能具有很强的基质效应。（2）样品易于收集且价格便宜，并且不需要事先部署采样器。关键缺点是HVAC过滤器不是为分析化学而设计的，因此过滤器材料可能具有可变的或未知的气体吸附和颗粒捕获，并且在分析过程中可能具有很强的基质效应。（2）样品易于收集且价格便宜，并且不需要事先部署采样器。关键缺点是HVAC过滤器不是为分析化学而设计的，因此过滤器材料可能具有可变的或未知的气体吸附和颗粒捕获，并且在分析过程中可能具有很强的基质效应。