Indoor and outdoor gaseous PAHs in the hospital and university of Ouargla city, Algeria

The air of our living places is affected by organic compounds, which can exist as vapors (VOCs, e.g. benzene group) or aggregated to airborne particulates and dusts (e.g., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAHs and very polar substances). The occurrence of organic contaminants was investigated in the hospital and university of Ouargla city, Algeria, by applying the diffusive sampling technique. For our purposes, Analyst-2 type sampling devices (produced by Marbaglass, Rome, Italy) were deployed both inside and outside, in the autumn 2015. Analyst-2 has been developed for semi-volatile organics at low virtual flow rates, and allows to collect gaseous PAHs in the 128-202 molecular weight range, namely from naphthalene up to pyrene). Therefore, the air contaminants are determined by solvent extraction (toluene) and gas chromatographic - mass spectrometric analysis (GC/MS). In our case, total PAHs ranged between 1.8 and 8.6 µg/m3 in interiors and from 0.6 to 0.8 µg/m3 in the open air, with an in/out concentration ratio exceeding 3 at both sites. This means that internal sources affected the location investigated; meanwhile, PAH pollution was more important at the university than at hospital. Abatement measures must be implemented in both sites, to mitigate the exposure of population to these toxicants.