Airborne gases settle in smog particles from which they cannot escape. The results of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences could explain why pollution computer models underestimate organic aerosols.
Atmospheric chemist Alla Zelenyuk at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory evaluated millions of the artificial smog particles one-by-one using a one-of-a-kind, 900-pound instrument known as SPLAT (a single particle laser ablation time-of-flight mass spectrometer). The study was led by Barbara Finlayson-Pitts of the University of California, Irvine.
Read the entire release from the University of California, Irvine here.