Results of the inter-laboratory comparison exercise for TC and EC measurements
PT OC&EC-2025-01
The ACTRIS Centre for Aerosol In-Situ measurements ECAC (European Centre for Aerosol Calibration) completed, in April 2025, the annual inter-laboratory exercise for the measurement of total, elemental and organic carbon (TC; EC; and OC) in particulate matter collected on filters. This exercise was provided by the European Reference Laboratory for Air Pollution of the EC-JRC.
The overall scope of this ILC is to enhance the comparability and determine the uncertainty of the TC, OC and EC atmospheric concentration data produced across Europe. This ILC scheme was based on ambient PM2.5 aerosol samples collected on quartz fibre filters at a rural background site in Ispra, Italy.
The primary goal is to assess participants’ performance in determining the TC loading and the EC/TC ratio, to evaluate the accuracy of the instrument response throughout the analysis and the optical correction for charring, respectively. 36 laboratories, with 37 analyzers in total, participated in this exercise, all - except 1 - running the EUSAAR_2 protocol as their usual thermal-optical protocol with their usual analytical instrument.
Participants’ performance is determined in terms of z-scores, a measure of the participants’ bias compared to an assigned value associated with its standard deviation. For TC filter loadings, 10 outliers and 16 stragglers and for the EC/TC ratios, 11 outliers and 16 stragglers were identified, respectively.
CAVALLI Fabrizia;
PUTAUD Jean-Philippe;
2025-10-06
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC142729
978-92-68-29860-2 (online),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 40391,
OP KJ-01-25-383-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC142729,
10.2760/3149321 (online),
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