Particulate matter contaminates our atmosphere in various ways. It can for instance be generated by different industrial production processes,waste combustion, coal mining or automobile exhausts. The APDA-371 automatically measures and records airborne particulate concentration levels (in milligrams or micrograms per cubic meter), using the industry-proven principle of beta ray attenuation. Each hour, a small carbon-14 element emits a constant source of high-energy electrons (known as beta rays) through a spot of clean fillter tape. These beta rays are detected and counted by a sensitive scintillation detector to determine a zero reading. The APDA-371 automatically advances this spot of tape to the sample nozzle, where a vacuum pump then pulls a measured and controlled amount of dust-loaded air through the filter tape. Hourly this dirty spot is placed back between the beta source and the detector thereby causing an attenuation of the beta ray signal which is used to determine the mass of the particulate matter on the filter tape.