Intercomparison of Methods for Sampling and Analysis of Atmospheric Mercury Species

An intercomparison for sampling and analysis of atmospheric mercury species was held in Tuscany, June 1998.Methods for sampling and analysis of total gaseous mercury (TGM), reactive gaseous mercury (RGM) and totalparticulate mercury (TPM) were used in parallel sampling over a period of 4 days. The results show that the differentmethods employed for TGM compared well whereas RGM and TPM showed a somewhat higher variability.Measurement results of RGM and TPM improved over the time period indicating that activities at the sampling siteduring set-up and initial sampling affected the results. Especially the TPM measurement results were affected.Additional parallel sampling was performed for two of the TPM methods under more controlled conditions whichyielded more comparable results.