Measuring hazardous air pollutants

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAAs) represent the most dramatic environmental legislation to impact US manufacturing to date. The CAAAs force manufacturers to reconsider their approach toward the reduction and the elimination of emissions. Perhaps the most significant aspect of CAAAs is the manner in which they are to be enforced. For the first time the federal government, through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has the authority to penalize any company that compromises the air quality standards. Congress has modified the EPA approach and cited 189 air toxics that require monitoring and emissions reduction even though threshold limits for these species may not be established. the overall approach of the CAAAs is to move away from complete emissions elimination and toward a finite reduction of all air toxics through the use of existing technologies to achieve maximum air quality improvements. The suitability of mass spectrometry with a capillary sampling system has been investigated for the accurate detection of a broad range of emissions, including nitrogen oxides, sodium oxides, and sulfur oxides.