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Higher plants may be used as biomonitors for the assessment of atmospheric heavy metal pollution by means of their bioaccumulative properties. We evaluated the reliability of biomonitoring heavy metal pollution by horse chestnut and linden leaves, common species found in Belgrade city parks. The results show that the highest concentrations of heavy metals were found in horse chestnut leaves at Studentski Park site, amounting to 110.2, 20.3 and 4.9 mg g 1 dry weight for Cu, Pb and Cd, respectively, which are considered above toxic levels for plants.

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The collected data should provide a base for the health risk assessments on animals and humans in the near future. It should be emphasized that the sampling was carried out 5 years after the military action and that the number of samples was limited; therefore, the conclusions should be accepted only as observed tendencies and a detailed study should be recommended in the future.

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An assessment of air quality of Belgrade, Serbia, was performed by determining the trace element content in airborne daily PM 10 and PM 2.5 samples collected from a central urban area. The ambient concentrations of Zn were the highest in PM 2.5 (1,998.0 ng m -3 ). Multivariate receptor modelling (principal component analysis and cluster analysis) has been applied to determine the contribution of different sources of specific metallic components in airborne particles. The obtained results showed that vehicle traffic and fossil fuel combustion in stationary objects were the main sources of trace metals in Belgrade urban aerosols.

Active biomonitoring of the air quality in Belgrade, Serbia, was performed using the moss Sphagnum girgensohnii. Moss bags were exposed in parallel with and without irrigation for 3 and 6 months, respectively, at three different sites. Twenty-nine elements were determined in the exposed moss samples by INAA. For all exposure periods, higher uptake in the irrigated moss bags was evident for Al, Cr, Fe, Zn and Sr. Elements such as Cl, K, Rb and Cs were depleted in the moss tissue during the time of exposure. For most of the elements the accumulation after 6 months exceeded that observed after 3 months.