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The traditional approach for analysis of aerosol organics is to extract aerosol materials collected on filter substrates with organic solvents followed by solvent evaporation and analytical separation and detection. This approach has the weaknesses of being labor intensive and being prone to contamination from the extracting solvents. We describe here an alternative approach for the analysis of aerosol alkanes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that obviates the use of solvents. In our approach, small strips of aerosol-laden filter materials are packed into a GC split/splitless injector liner. Alkanes and PAHs on the filter are thermally desorbed in the injection port and focused onto the head of a GC column for subsequent separation and detection. No instrument modification is necessary to accommodate the introduction of the aerosol organics into the GC–MS system. Comparison studies were carried out on …