A comparison of four personal sampling methods for the determination of mercury vapor

Four sampling and analytical methods for mercury vapor were compared to each other in terms of precision and accuracy. The four sampling medias used were the 3M passive Mercury Vapor Monitor, the Los Alamos tandem sampling tube, the hopcalite tube, and the iodine impregnated charcoal tube. Six samples from each method were collected at nominal mercury concentrations of 0.05, 0.1, and 0.2 mg/m3. The hopcalite and 3M monitors gave comparable results at all three concentrations while the Los Alamos method gave similar results at the two highest concentrations. The iodine charcoal tube method was the only one exhibiting poor precision when tube loadings were less than 3 micrograms of mercury.