Exposures to particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 mu m or less (PM2.5) may influence the risk of birth defects and make you allergic, which causes serious harm to human health. Bamboo charcoal can adsorb harmful substances, that was of benefitto people's health. In order to figure out the optimal adsorbtion condition and the intrinsic change of bamboo charcoal, five chemicals were adsorbed by bamboo charcoal and were analyzed by FT-IR. The optimal blast time was 80 min of Na2SO3, 100 min of Na2S2O8, 20 min of Na2SO4, 120 min of Fe-2(SO4)(3) and 60 min or 100 min of S. FT-IR spectra showed that bamboo charcoal had five characteristic peaks of SAS stretch, H2O stretch, O-H stretch, C=O stretch or C=C stretch, and NO2 stretch at 3850 cm(-1), 3740 cm(-1), 3430 cm(-1), 1630 cm(-1) and 1530 cm(-1), respectively. For Na2SO3, the peaks at 3850 cm(-1), 3740 cm(-1), 3430 cm(-1), 1630 cm(-1) and 1530 cm(-1) achieved the maximum at 20 min. For Na2S2O8, the peaks at 3850 cm(-1), 3740 cm(-1), 3430 cm(-1) and 1530 cm(-1) achieved the maximum at 40 min. For Na2SO4, the peaks at 3850 cm(-1), 3740 cm(-1) and 1530 cm(-1) achieved the maximum at 40 min. For Fe-2(SO4)(3), the peaks at 3850 cm(-1), 3740 cm(-1), 1630 cm(-1) and 1530 cm(-1) achieved the maximum at 120 min. For S, the peaks at 3850 cm(-1) and 3740 cm(-1) achieved the maximum at 40 min, the peaks at 1630 cm(-1) and 1530 cm(-1) achieved the maximum at 40 min. It proved that bamboo charcoal could remove sulfur powder from air to restrain sulfur allergies. (C) 2016 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University.