Sunset Laboratory Inc. specializes in the analysis of air pollution for carbon aerosols. As well as performing the analysis, Sunset Laboratory also designs and provides instruments which do this analysis of carbon aerosol both lab-based and semi-continuously in the field. Sunset Laboratory Inc. was founded to provide OCEC analyses of glass, quartz and other environmental filter samples. The thermal-optical OCEC instrument used for this work was based upon instruments developed at the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology. Initially, samples were run primarily for environmental applications, such as EPA monitoring programs for visibility and particle loading, but workplace exposure assessments have also become an important area of expertise. In the early 1990s, Sunset Lab began to make the thermal-optical OCEC lab instruments available commercially. Since then, the company has sold over 60 of these instruments worldwide, with a combined analysis base of well over 250,000 filter samples. The sample sources analyzed by this method are collected in a variety of environments, ranging from ambient urban and rural areas to mining sites, work environments, national parklands, forest fire plumes, and other unusual events. This instrument became the basis for the NIOSH Method 5040. The journal article describing it was awarded the NIOSH Alice Hamilton Award in 1996. In 2000, Sunset Laboratory intorduced a semi-continuous, real-time, in-situ carbon aerosol field
instrument. The time-resolution capability and laser-based pyrolysis correction techniques of this instrument provide a dynamic addition to existing technology with refined information about particle origins, health exposures, and changes in air quality.
