Comparison of two manual methods of nitrogen dioxide determination in ambient air

Sodium arsenite (modified Jacobs and Hochheiser method; hereafter referred as SA), the most widely used manual monitoring method for determination of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in ambient air, particularly in developing countries has been evaluated and compared with US EPA recommended equivalent method of TGS-ANSA (hereafter referred as ANSA). NO2 concentrations generated from laboratory test atmosphere were analyzed by these two methods and were compared statistically. Laboratory evaluations showed that SA method has high sensitivity to different sampling conditions, which normally vary during actual field monitoring. Hence, correction factors for absorption efficiency were estimated for SA and ANSA methods. Absorption efficiency of NO2 in SA method was found to be much lower (64%) as against the reported value of 82% at the method recommended sampling conditions, whereas for ANSA method, it was found 1.0 as against the reported value of 0.93. After applying derived correction factors, both the methods produced almost similar concentration values of NO2.