To ensure the water quality in Europe, the European Commission asked the member states to provide comparable and traceable measurement results for the analysis of critical pollutants. Considering the increasing environmental challenges, the contribution of metrology is necessary both for the improvement of analysis reliability and the comparability of results. For this reason the European research project Euramet/EMRP/ENV08 “Traceable measurements for monitoring critical pollutants under the European Water Framework Directive (WFD-2000/60/EC)”, funded by the EMRP, aimed to provide the elements for the development of a metrological basis. The project develops primary reference methods enabling the analysis of priority hazardous substances in order to meet the WFD requirements in terms of performance levels (limit of quantification and uncertainties). Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) – priority hazardous substances for which no DCE compatible methods exist – are among the three families of pollutants targeted by the project. This paper tackles the development and validation of the PAH analysis method on whole water samples. The method that best meets the requirements of the WFD in terms of level of concentration and uncertainty is the solid phase extraction (SPE) method with SPE-disks, followed by isotope dilution analysis combined with gas chromatography mass spectrometry (ID-GC/MS).

The TEOM-FDMS (Tapered Element Oscillating Microbalance with Filter Dynamics Measurement Systems) is a common measuring instrument employed by the French air quality monitoring network.This instrument is currently calibrated with calibration weights traceable to SI but having values and masses differences between each of them which are not representative of real atmospheric particle mass measurements. Moreover, these calibration weights do not allow detecting any technical problem of the TEOM-FDMS sampling system upstream the mass measurement and of the intrinsic TEOM-FDMS filtration system. In this way, a calibration method was developed using a portable particle generator system producing known and stable particle mass concentrations over time. In this paper, we present the characterization of this portable generation system in terms of reference range of particle masses, its coupling with four different TEOM-FDMS and the global comparison between the defined reference range of particle masses and the averaged weighed and measured masses obtained with each TEOM-FDMS implicated in this study.

In temperate climate, people spend on average 85% of their time in closed environments and a majority of that time in housing. Different sources (furniture, floors, walls, ceilings) may be responsible for the presence of pollutants in these closed environments. To address the health challenge raised by the quality of indoor air and provide useful elements for the management of this risk to public authorities, the French agency for food, environmental and occupational health and safety (Anses) works since 2004 in the development of indoor air guideline values (IAGVs), based exclusively on health criteria. Since the beginning of this work, Anses identified eleven indoor air pollutants of interest including formaldehyde known for its irritant effects. Since 2004, formaldehyde is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as “proven carcinogen to humans” (Group 1) and since 2007 is subject to IAGVs (short term IAGVs 50 μg·m⁻³ for an exposure of two hours and long term IAGVs 10 ug·m⁻³ for an exposure of more than one year). Many measurement campaigns are regularly carried out, particularly in housing, public buildings including schools and childcare facilities, but also in unusual places such as swimming pools, gymnasiums, etc. The objective of this study was to develop Certified Reference Materials (CRMs) which are in the form of cartridges impregnated with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH) containing a known amount of formaldehyde over a mass range of 1 μg to 10 μg corresponding to masses commonly measured in the field of indoor air, and to ensure the traceability of formaldehyde measurements performed by the analytical laboratories. To achieve this, LNE has developed a bench allowing the generation of formaldehyde gas mixtures based on the use of permeation tubes of alpha-polyoxymethylene and a method of loading DNPH cartridges. The characterization of this method leads to final uncertainties measurements on formaldehyde masses ranging from 3.3% to 8% and a stability of 20 days for a mass range from 1 μg to 10 μg; it also highlights significant influence of some parameters such as the stability over the time on formaldehyde masses loaded on the cartridges.