An overview of research and development themes in the measurement and occurrences of polyaromatic hydrocarbons in dusts and particulates

•> 42,000 papers with PAH in the title or the abstract have been published since 1970.•Text -mining has been used to identify research themes in paper titles and abstracts.•Titles and abstracts from >3000 papers on PAHs in airborne particulates were reviewed.•Word pair network plots were used to highlight research themes.