Aerosol Pollution from Small Combustors in a Village

Abstract

Urban air pollution is widely recognized. Recently, there have been a few projects that examined air quality in rural areas (e.g., AUPHEP project in Austria, WOODUSE project in Denmark). Here we present the results within the International Cooperation Project RER/2/005 targeted at studying the effect of local combustion processes to air quality in the village of Brzezina in the countryside north-west of Wroclaw (south western Poland). We identified the potential emission sources and quantified their contributions. The ambient aerosol monitoring (PM10 and elemental concentrations) was performed during 4 measurement cycles, in summer 2009, 2010 and in winter 2010, 2011. Some receptor modeling techniques, factor analysis-multiple linear regression analysis (FA-MLRA) and potential source localization function (PSLF), have been used. Different types of fuel burning along with domestic refuse resulted in an increased concentration of PM10 particle mass, but also by an increased in various other compounds (As, Pb, Zn). Local combustion sources contributed up to 80% to PM10 mass in winter. The effect of other sources was small, from 6 to 20%, dependently on the season. Both PM10 and elemental concentrations in the rural settlement were comparable to concentrations at urban sites in summer and were much higher in winter, which can pose asignificant health risk to its inhabitants.

Chemical characterization and source identification of particulate matter PM10 in a rural and urban site in Poland

“…Recently most studies on PM have been associated with urban sites, however people in an agriculturally used region are also exposed to PM from both naturally occurring processes and human activities [2,[5][6][7][8]. Therefore, more research is needed to better understand this problem and to evaluate the health risk of PM both for the inhabitants of rural settlements and cities.…”

Analysis of the data set from a two-year observation of the ambient water-soluble ions bound to four particulate matter fractions in an urban background site in Southern Poland

“…Each two-year set of monthly ion concentrations for PM1, PM1-2.5, and PM2.5-10, according to GRM clearly affected by a season, was split into two seasonal sets to which PCA was applied separately. The seasonal effects appeared also in the virtual sources of PM1, PM1-2.5, and PM2.5-10 determined by using PCA [23,24].…”

“…In the non-heating period, the PC1, accounting for 40% of the data variance, was highly correlated with the concentrations of PM2.5-10-bound F -, Cl -, NO3 -, SO4 2and Na + , while PC2 (eigenvalue = 2.17) was correlated only with the K + concentration. As far as coarse PM is considered, it may mean both PC1 and PC2 representing re-suspension of mineral matter or road dust [1,15,17,23,24].…”

The Use of Trajectory Cluster Analysis to Evaluate the Long-Range Transport of Black Carbon Aerosol in the South-Eastern Baltic Region

“…Most of the reported winter episodes in Europe were caused by long-range transport from sources of particulate matter, such as coal/wood combustion for heating [28], as well as by increased traffic emissions due to unfavorable winter driving conditions [29]. Wood burning along with domestic waste and poorest and least expensive types of fuel is probably widely existing in individual heating houses not only in Lithuania and Poland [30]. Regions over north southern Europe are always associated with the highest CWT values, but the CWT values for eastern flows are higher in summer and winter.…”