ANALYSIS OF AIR-POLLUTANTS BY PIXE - THE 2ND DECADE

Analysis of air pollution by PIXE was the earliest and one of the most successful applications of the technique. In the first decade that followed the pioneering paper of Johansson et al. in 1970 [1], many innovative programs grew up around the technique. By 1980, five of the six largest PIXE groups in the world listed analyses of air pollutants as their most numerous sample type [2], with more than 30000 analyses in the year 1979 alone. The purpose of this article is to examine the role of PIXE in air pollution in the second decade, to see to what degree the bright promises of the 1970s have been realized, to examine the reasons for the successes and the failures, and to attempt to use this information to predict the role of PIXE in the next decade. © 1990.