Determination of total suspended particulate with and without the use of control filters

Abstract

The use of preconditioned control filters as relative humidity correction method for total suspended particulate (TSP) mass collected on a glass-fiber hi-vol filter was investigated. The results showed that there was a difference in particulate concentrations calculated in each TSP filters with or without using the control filters, but the difference was insignificant (α=0.01). The difference was mainly due to the hygroscopic nature of the TSP samples rather than the filters. The study suggests that the effect of relative humidity (r.h) on glass-fiber filter can be neglected as long as the filters are equilibrated at least than or equal to 50% r.h before and after the sampling events.