KRISS released a Certified Reference Material (CRM) 

for the analysis of particulate matters (PMs) 

representing urban environmental characteristics of Korea

- The urban PM CRM developed by KRISS is expected 

to allow reliable and traceable measurements of various analytes in PMs or related samples.-

▲The urban particulate matters(PMs) certified reference material(CRM) developed by KRISS 

 KRISS has successfully developed the urban particulate matters (PMs) certified reference material (CRM)* for the analysis of 7 chemical components in the PMs, including harmful elements. The CRM will be used for the quality control and validation of the measurement procedure in the analysis of the PMs, which also allows subsequent use of the data for reliable risk assessment, and source tracking.

▲ (Left) The interdisciplinary research team to develop the urban PM CRM

(Right) The research team members are conducting experiments using the developed urban PM CRM 

The CRM was developed by the interdisciplinary research team** of KRISS. The team procured a large amount of PM raw materials in the Greater Seoul area for two years. The raw materials were processed to obtain homogeneous samples with confined particle size distribution and packaged in an inert condition to guarantee stabilities of the characterized properties. Currently, a few urban PM CRMs are commercially available from the NIST, USA, and the JRC, EU. However, the raw materials of those CRMs were collected in 1970s in USA or Europe with local origins and environmental conditions of the period during the material collection. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the KRISS urban PM CRM is that it better represents current environmental characteristics of the Greater Seoul, Korea.

PMs are small airborne particulates that are invisible to human eyes. Although they have been generated naturally on Earth since ancient times, increasing contamination of various harmful chemicals caused by the industrial activities in the modern era has deteriorated air pollution by PMs and seriously threatened ecological public health. Therefore, reliable measurement of various chemical components in PMs is essential for the evaluation of PM toxicity and the establishment of efficient strategies to minimize PM releases in the environment. Because PMs consist of complex ingredients including elements, organic compounds, and ions of diverse geological/anthropogenic origins, it is challenging to accurately measure individual chemicals in the material. The urban PM CRM developed by KRISS is expected to allow reliable and traceable measurements of various analytes in PMs or related samples by providing efficient means for the quality control of measurement results and the validation of measurement methods. It currently provides the certified values for 7 elements; antimony, calcium, copper, lead, magnesium, tin and zinc. For more extensive coverage of analytes related to PM toxicity and origin identification, more analytes will be included as certified or reference values in the near future.

The Air Quality Intensive Monitoring Stations of the Ministry of Environment periodically monitor the representative harmful components in PMs. The newly developed CRMs can be used for the quality control of the measurement results to improve the reliability of the field measurements. In addition, the chemical composition information obtained from the urban PM CRMs as well as the isotope ratios that will be characterized later can be utilized as a fingerprint for PM sources. The research for the identification of PM sources using the CRMs will be conducted on a full scale after PM CRMs of various origins are completely developed, wherein the origins include roads, subways and incineration plants.

Yong-Hyeon Yim, the leader of the project, commented, “The demand for PM CRMs is drastically increasing in relation to the researches on the toxicology of PMs. We’d like to develop PM CRMs more useful for the toxicology and origin identification researches as well as the environmental monitoring for public health. Our interdisciplinary team will continue our efforts to increase the coverage of characterized properties of the CRMs including harmful organic components, ions, isotope ratios, microbiome information, and the complex patterns of multiple organic components.”

The research was supported by the Internal Research Program of KRISS, and the newly developed urban PM CRM is available in the KRISS E-Shop (https://eshop.kriss.re.kr) from March. /fin./

* Certified Reference Material (CRM): A certified reference material that is the reference material with sufficient homogeneity and stability, characterized by a metrologically valid procedure, which is used for calibrating instruments, performance evaluation or validation of measurement procedures. 

** The interdisciplinary team consists of the Inorganic Metrology Group, Organic Metrology Group, Biometrology Group, Gas Metrology  Group of the Division of Chemical and Biological Metrology, and the Climate Watch and Hydrogen Quality Metrology Team of the Advanced Instrumentation Institute.