Development of Complete ex vacuo Ion Beam Analysis and its Application to Indoor and Outdoor Environment Dust Samples

The escalating duration of time spent indoors over recent decades has resulted in prolonged exposure to environmental pollutants within indoor spaces. While efforts to measure indoor pollutants have been underway, most existing methods are characterized by substantial expenses or protracted measurement durations. This dissertation addresses these challenges by proposing a method suitable for assessing both indoor and outdoor dusts and soils, thereby facilitating widespread screening of indoor environments for potential pollutants. The devised approach to achieve this objective is the ex vacuo Ion Beam Analysis (IBA), characterized by its rapid measurement time of 3 minutes and cost-effectiveness attributed to the straightforward sample preparation required. This methodology has been applied to three distinct sample sets, encompassing an XRF vacuum dust study conducted in Marion County, Indiana, a Reddit vacuum dust survey spanning the state of Indiana, and a road dust collection initiative from Lake County, Indiana. In addition to the innovative measurement technique, the sampling approach employed in the Reddit survey involved harnessing the collective efforts of online volunteers who submitted their vacuum dust samples for analysis. This presents an opportunity to expand the realm of citizen science, concurrently mitigating sample collection costs by necessitating only the purchase of postage and envelopes as opposed to physically visiting each collection site.