Very recently, air pollution was declared the world’s single largest environmental health risk by the World Health Organization. The goal of this thesis is to contribute to a better assessment of air pollution through the development of novel and exhaustive extraction methods for the analysis of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are mutagenic and carcinogenic air pollutants.

The methods were developed and validated for the extraction of PAHs in both the semi-volatile fraction and particulate matter with application to samples derived from major sources of PAHs (diesel exhaust, coal fly ash and wood smoke samples). Pressurized liquid extraction was used because it allows a high sample throughput with reduced solvent requirements and analysis time compared to other traditionally used techniques, such as Soxhlet extraction.

The results presented herein show that the extraction conditions used when analyzing PAHs need to be evaluated to avoid underestimating their concentrations. This is especially true for the human carcinogen benzo[a]pyrene, which is often used as an indicator in the cancer risk assessments of PAHs, and the dibenzopyrene isomers due to their potentially high carcinogenicities.