Determination of arsenic and mercury metals in suspended particulate matter by flame/flameless atomic absorption spectrometer

A method has been developed for the accurate determination of arsenic and mercury deposited on suspended particulate matter (SPM) collected by high volume sampler (HVS) from various locations of Delhi (Capital city of India) by using hydride generator with flame/flameless Atomic Absorption spectrometry (AAS). Several diverse sites has been monitored for arsenic and mercury content in environment by analyzing the samples by the method proposed, but in the present study we are reporting data from seven diverse sites Ashram (S-1; heavy traffic zone), Azadpur (S-2; industrial zone), Loni Road (S-3; densely populated + traffic zone), Pitampura (S-4; urban background zone), Highway no. 56 (S-5; traffic zone), Naraina (S-6; industrial zone) and NPL (S-7; mix zone). The standard deviation of the measurements has been calculated on the basis of six observations of two replicates (three each) of each analyzed species and was found to be less than 3.5% by the proposed method. The validity of the method proposed has been established by standard addition of arsenic and mercury in the procedureal blank (without sample) and also to check the loss during the process. It has been found that in five replicates, arsenic and mercury recoveries were 99.3 +/- 0.4% and 99.1 +/- 0.6% respectively within 95% confidence level. The method proposed is highly reproducible and can be used for accurate determination of arsenic and mercury in the atmospheric particulate matter samples. The arsenic concentration varied from 1.3 +/- 0.11 ng/m(3) to 5.1 +/- 0.27 ng/m(3), while concentration of mercury varied from 1.4 +/- 0.21 ng/m(3) to 12.5 +/- 0.81 ng/m(3), in seven diverse sites of the Delhi. (c) Author(s) 2010. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.