Robert Thomas

This study describes the recovery of compounds above the boiling point of naphthalene achieved by optimizing the thermal desorption chemistry for the determination of volatile organic compounds ranging from C3 to C26 in soil gas samples using Method TO-17. Figures of merit such as breakthrough, precision, linearity, and detection capability are presented, in addition to an evaluation of its real-world capability at sites with moderate diesel and semivolatile polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbon (up to pyrene) contamination, in the presence of high humidity. This research has provided a means to determine a more representative composition of soil gas.

This study describes the need to recover compounds above the boiling point of naphthalene by optimizing the thermal desorption chemistry for the determination of VOCs from C3 to C26 in soil gas samples using Method TO-17. Figures of merit, such as breakthrough, precision, linearity and detection capability will be presented, in addition to evaluating its real-world capability at sites with moderate diesel and semi-volatile polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbon (up to pyrene) contamination, in the presence of high humidity.

Single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (SP-ICP-MS) is an exciting new technique for detecting and characterizing metal nanoparticles (NP) at very low concentrations. It is fast and can provide significantly more information than other traditional techniques, including particle number concentration, particle size, and size distribution, in addition to the concentration of dissolved metals in solution. The added benefit of using ICP-MS is that it can distinguish between particles of different elemental compositions. The study will investigate the use of SP-ICP-MS to track the release of ENMs into the environment and to better understand their fate and behavior specifically in drinking, surface and wastewater samples.

This study focuses on United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) Method 524.3 for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in water using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS).

This article describes a new, single method to replace the two-method approach using United States EPA Methods TO-15 and TO-13A for the analysis of both VOCs and SVOCs in air.

A new, single method to replace the two-method approach using EPA Methods TO-15 and TO-13A to analyze both volatile and semivolatile organic compounds in air

A new, single method to replace the two-method approach using EPA methods TO-15 and TO-13A to analyze both volatile and semivolatile organic compounds in air.

This article provides an overview of the capabilities of field-flow fractionation coupled with inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry and demonstrates that the technique shows a great deal of promise to separate, detect and quantitate nanoparticles in environmental matrices.

A fast clean and simple method to determine three organotin compounds in environmental samples is described

The authors evaluate a new approach to sample preparation for the analysis of pesticides in raw agricultural commodities.