Seasonal variation and source estimation of organic compounds in urban aerosol of Augsburg, Germany.

This study reports a general assessment of the organic composition of the PM2.5 samples collected in the city of Augsburg, Germany, in two investigation campaigns performed by collecting urban aerosol samples in summer and winter for 36 (August-September 2007) and 30 (February- March 2008) days, respectively. A thermal desorption-gas chromatography-time of flight mass spectrometry (DTD-GC-TOFMS) technique was applied for the simultaneous determination of many classes of molecular markers: C20-C35 n-alkanes, anteiso- and iso-C29-C33 n-alkanes, 10 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and 7 oxidized PAHs (O-PAH), and more polar compounds, including long chain n-alkanoic acids, levoglucosan and cholesterol