An improved method is described for the quantification of primary sugars, sugar alcohols and anhydrosugars in atmospheric aerosols, making use of separation by high-performance anion-exchange chromatography (HPAEC) with pulsed amperometric detection (PAD). Quartz fibre filters from high-volume samplers were extracted with water and the extract injected directly. Repeatability is typically 4% RSD, for e.g. levoglucosan at 50ngm −3 in air, better for winter levels around 700ngm −3 . Limits of detection for individual sugars are in the range 0.02–0.05μgmL −1 in solution, corresponding to 2–5ngm −3 from a 20m 3 air sample. The overlap of arabitol and levogluocosan is overcome by using a Dionex PA-1 column, with appropriate control of eluent composition, and peak deconvolution software, allowing quantification of both sugars in difficult summer samples containing low-levels of levoglucosan. Analysis of a set of ambient aerosol samples by both GC-flame ionization detection and HPAEC-PAD shows good agreement. The new method has the advantage of requiring no sample pretreatment or derivatization and is thus well suited to handling large numbers of samples.