ABSTRACT
The industrial development and the extensive use of fossil fuels gives rise to different organic pollutants in the atmosphere, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Certain types of fossil fuel and the application of technological processes influence significantly the type and amount of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons emitted in the atmosphere. Some of these substances after the metabolic transformation exert significant mutagenic and carcinogenic activity1 binding to the nucleophilic centers of nucleic acids and other cellular macromolecules.2,3 As PAHs involve a large group of substances with similar chemical properties, it is necessary to establish the method for their unequivocal identification. This need was recently accentuated following the discovery that some polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, whilst not genotoxic themselves, in the atmosphere react with nitrogen oxides and yield nitro derivatives.4,5 Nitroaryl compounds are metabolically converted into hydroxyl amines,6 such substances are responsible for toxic and genotoxic activities of aromatic amines.7,8 Also, it was noted that some photo oxidative products of nongenotoxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons9 exert carcinogenic10 or even more tumor-promoting activities.11 This is one of the reasons for the numerous investigations carried out into the behavior of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and their isomers in the environmental samples.
