Particulate matter (PM) is the major environmental pollutant. Its elemental composition is routinely monitored. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICPMS) is commonly applied after a PM sample has been digested by an acid during a microwave treatment. In this case, sample preparation procedure is laborious, sometimes incomplete and produces toxic waste. In this paper we show that direct sample introduction to ICPMS by laser ablation (LA-ICPMS) is of huge advantage. Minimal quantity of a sample is required for the analysis (<1 cm²) and no chemical waste is produced. The study focused on the most universal and widely used quartz fibre filter samples and we show that LA-ICPMS can be successfully applied for the determination of the elemental composition of such samples. Some effort is, however, still needed to develop an autosampler for the LA-ICPMS system and to provide commercial matrix-matched standards for this application to be implemented in environment laboratories worldwide.

颗粒物（PM）是主要的环境污染物。常规监测其元素组成。电感耦合等离子体质谱法（ICPMS）通常在微波处理过程中已将PM样品用酸消解后应用。在这种情况下，样品制备过程费力，有时不完整，并产生有毒废物。在本文中，我们证明了通过激光烧蚀将样品直接引入ICPMS（LA-ICPMS）具有巨大的优势。分析所需的样品量最少（<1 cm ²），不会产生化学废物。该研究集中在最通用和使用最广泛的石英纤维过滤器样品上，我们表明LA-ICPMS可成功地用于测定此类样品的元素组成。但是，仍需要做出一些努力来开发用于LA-ICPMS系统的自动进样器，并为此应用提供商业化的基质匹配标准，以在全球环境实验室中实施。