Surface sampling for chemical analysis plays a vital role in applications like environmental monitoring, industrial hygiene, homeland security, and forensics. The standard surface sampling tool is a simple cotton gauze pad, but as techniques become more sensitive and the variety of analytes increases, gauze is failing to meet the needs of the community. Here, the collection of eight small molecules from glass surfaces with three different commercial spray-on, strippable coatings was demonstrated and their collection efficiency, as measured by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, was compared to that of a standard cotton gauze. The three coating systems recovered 87-95% of the each compound, on average, from a nominal initial surface coverage of 0.1 g/m(2) per analyte. These recoveries were 3-fold better than the cotton gauze which had an average collection efficiency of 31%.
After an event involving the deliberate release of toxic chemicals, there is a need to collect samples at the affected site for preservation, recovery, and analysis of the chemical species of interest. These would likely include the active or toxic species as well as chemicals that could serve as chemical attribution signatures that would be important in assigning responsibility for the release. In this preliminary study, a standard gauze pad surface sampling material and technique was compared with the use of silicone rubber samplers placed on glass and coated steel solid surfaces. A range of commercially available silicone rubbers was examined for possible use and one was selected for more extensive evaluation due to its relative ease of handling and minimal interferences with the analytical process. The experiments were conducted with organic chemical species that covered a range of volatilities; two contaminant challenge concentrations were used. The silicone rubber samplers, as applied, were found to consistently collect higher quantities of organic chemicals from the solid surfaces than did the gauze pads. Results of these initial experiments are discussed and ongoing efforts are briefly described.
Surface sampling for chemical analysis plays a vital role in environmental monitoring, industrial hygiene, homeland security and forensics. The standard surface sampling tool, a simple cotton gauze pad, is failing to meet the needs of the community as analytical techniques become more sensitive and the variety of analytes increases. In previous work, we demonstrated the efficacy of non-destructive, conformal, spray-on strippable coatings for chemical collection from simple glass surfaces. Here we expand that work by presenting chemical collection at a low spiking level (0.1 g m(-2)) from a diverse array of common surfaces - painted metal, engineering plastics, painted wallboard and concrete - using strippable coatings. The collection efficiency of the strippable coatings is compared to and far exceeds gauze pads. Collection from concrete, a particular challenge for wipes like gauze, averaged 73% over eight chemically diverse compounds for the strippable coatings whereas gauze averaged 10%.
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