Abstract
With the increase of consumption of fossil fuels, large amounts of pollutants released into the atmosphere cause serious health problems. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and nitropolycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (NPAHs) are one of the atmospheric hazardous pollutants. The mutagenicities of several NPAHs are much stronger than those of PAHs, but the concentrations of NPAHs are much lower than those of PAHs in the environment. However, the progress of the study on the environmental behaviors and health effects of NPAHs have been much slower than that of PAHs, because of the lack of sensitive analytical methods for trace NPAHs. I developed a highly sensitive determination method for NPAHs by using HPLC with chemiluminescence detection. We organized an atmospheric PAHs and NPAHs monitoring network which covered East-Asian countries surrounding the Japan Sea (Japan, China, Korea and Russia) to collect air samples and applied the above method for the determination of PAHs and NPAHs. This review deals with analytical methods, behaviors and toxicities of PAHs and NPAHs in East Asia.
