Perfluorocarbon background concentrations in Europe

Five studies of the background level of several perfluorocarbon compounds in Europe are here presented together with measurements from the European Tracer Experiment (ETEX). The tracers used during the two ETEX tracer releases were the perfluorocarbons (PFCs); perfluoromethylcyclohexane (C7F14, PMCH) and perfluoromethylcyclopentane (C6F12, PMCP). Their background concentrations were detected by using both passive and active sampling techniques, to define the spatial and temporal variation of the PFCs over Europe. Also the background variations of four isomers of the PFC compound perfluorodimethylcyclohexane (C8F16, PDCH) were studied. The results were compared to other PFC tracer studies in the U.S.A. and Europe. The mean and median values of the measured PFCs were found to vary slightly and randomly in space and time. They were found to be higher and to have a larger standard deviation than the measurements from the American studies. The background concentrations were still found to be low and stable enough for PFCs to be highly suitable for use in tracer studies. The following concentrations were found: PMCP; 4.6±0.3 fl ℓ-1, PMCH: 4.6±0.8 fl ℓ-1, ocPDCH: 0.96±0.33 fl ℓ-1, mtPDCH: 9.3±0.8 fl ℓ-1, mcPDCH: 8.8±0.8 fl ℓ-1, ptPDCH: 6.1±0.8 fl ℓ-1. A study of the correlation between the measured PFC compounds showed a significant correlation between most of the compounds, which indicate that there are no major PFC sources in Europe.