LCS Laboratory offers equipment rental, laboratory service, and technical support for the indoor air quality testing of Mercury.
When you plan for air sampling, you must begin with checking the industrial exposure limits. In Ontario, the time-weighted exposure limit for mercury is 0.025 mg/m³ (2013 guideline). It is a best practice to collect enough air to achieve a concentration 4-10 fold lower than the compliance limit.
You can expect a sensitivity for mercury of 0.004 mg/m³, after only sampling for 2-hours at 0.2 L/min, and 0.002 mg/m³ sensitivity after a 5 -hour long sampling.
If you are comparing your sampling results against the industrial exposure limit, a 1-hour sample is sensitive enough. Albeit, the longer you collect your sample, the more representative your result will be. This is because, the longer you collect a sample, the less likely your result will be affected by random environmental parameters.
The testing is more complicated if you need to evaluate the air contamination in residential or office buildings. Industrial exposure limit standards do not apply to residential houses. To the best of our knowledge, there is no formal “residential” exposure limit for mercury. Usually when calculating exposure limits for residential and business properties, consultants use 1/10 of the industrial exposure limits (this is not an official guideline) as a reference. They then compare the indoor readings with the outdoor levels in order to establish whether the contamination originated indoors or not. To achieve the desired sensitivity, you should collect at least 50-100 liters of air during the sampling, which is equivalent to 6-8 hour sampling at 0.2L/min.
To order your air sampling kit or to discuss your project, please email us. We also offer 100’s of air sampling tests for Industrial Hygienists and Homeowners.
