Water and Air pollution

Air is vital to all living organisms. However, the air that we breathe is contaminated with pollutants such as particulate matter, CO2 and nitrogen oxide. Air pollution is a health risk of global significance. According to the WHO, it causes around 7 million deaths per year. The monitoring and control of harmful substances in the air is therefore an important analytical field.

We supply versatile systems and technologies that have been proven in practice to support you with your analytical tasks.

According to the definition in the Federal Emissions Control Act, air pollution is any change to the natural composition of the air. A harmful substance is “any substance present in the air that can damage human health or the environment”. As part of environment protection measures there are statutory requirements to assess and evaluate air quality, in particular with regard to health and safety concerns.

GERSTEL thermal desorption systems transfer the analytes from air samples collected on sorbent tubes to the gas chromatograph (GC) for analysis and evaluation. These air samples can be taken from different sources such as the outside air (in urban or countryside areas), indoor air, air at workplaces or commercial and industrial sources. In addition the thermal desorption systems can also be used to examine particles collected on filters for potential emissions through thermal extraction of the filter material.