Anthropogenic air pollution states one of the greatest environmental risks in modern times, with multiple facets related to economic, political and social concerns 1-3. Although the European Union strongly promotes the use of biomass to replace fossil fuels in order to reach the Paris Agreement, emissions from residential wood combustion have been identified as a major contributor to the local air pollution in Europe 4 and thus also in Austria 5, 6. Besides particulate emissions, wood combustion is responsible for the emission of various toxic substances, like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs are persistent and widespread substances, comprising a group of several hundred congeners which are always emitted as a complex mixture. In recent times, many of these ubiquitous PAHs gained special interest because of their known toxic and carcinogenic effects 7. This talk highlights the development of different analytical procedures to quantify PAHs from environmentally important matrices and the obstacles to overcome. Concentrations of PAHs show a gradient trend in different compartments and highest contributions were found in emission and ambient samples 6, 8, for which already standardized analytical methods are available. To understand in which extend PAHs are dispersed and transported from one region to another, we enlarged the common focus of PAH contributions to other vehicles for atmospheric transport, i.e. snow and cloud water. Shifting the focus to different environmental compartments is entailed with a couple of analytical challenges requiring a multi-method approach. In general, lower PAH contributions are expected in snow and cloud water samples, they, however, significantly differ in the available sample volume. For PAH quantification in snow samples, we are working on a method for the parallel quantification of up to 33 PAHs based on a solid-phase extraction sample preparation procedure followed by a more sensitive GC-MS/MS analysis. When it comes to cloud water samples, the combination of low sample volume and analyte concentration refuses the use of typically used analytical methods for PAH quantification. To circumvent this challenge, we developed a novel method based on thermal desorption- proton transfer reaction – mass spectrometry (TD-PTR-MS). This project was funded by the Lions Sponsorship and realized in collaboration with colleagues from Utrecht University.