Nine-year trends of PM₁₀ sources and oxidative potential in a rural background site in France

Abstract

Abstract. Long-term monitoring at sites with relatively low particulate pollution could provide an opportunity to identify changes in pollutant concentration and potential effects of current air quality policies. In this study, 9-year sampling of PM10 (particles with an aerodynamic diameter below 10 µm) was performed in a rural background site in France (Observatoire Pérenne de l'Environnement or OPE) from 28 February 2012 to 22 December 2020. The positive matrix factorization (PMF) method was used to apportion sources of PM10 based on quantified chemical constituents and specific chemical tracers analysed on collected filters. Oxidative potential (OP), an emerging health metric that measures PM capability to potentially cause anti-oxidant imbalance in the lung, was also measured using two acellular assays: dithiothreitol (DTT) and ascorbic acid (AA). The sources of OP were also estimated using multiple linear regression (MLR) analysis. In terms of mass contribution, the dominant sources are secondary aerosols (nitrate- and sulfate-rich) associated with long-range transport (LRT). However, in terms of OP contributions, the main drivers are traffic, mineral dust, and biomass burning factors. There is also some OP contribution apportioned to the sulfate- and nitrate-rich sources influenced by processes and ageing during LRT that could have encouraged mixing with other anthropogenic sources. The study indicates much lower OP values than in urban areas. A substantial decrease (58 % reduction from the year 2012 to 2020) in the mass contributions from the traffic factor was found, even though this is not clearly reflected in its OP contribution. Nevertheless, the findings in this long-term study at the OPE site could indicate effectiveness of implemented emission control policies, as also seen in other long-term studies conducted in Europe, mainly for urban areas.

Discovering oxidative potential (OP) drivers of atmospheric PM10, PM2.5, and PM1 simultaneously in North-Eastern Spain

“…Finally, PM 1 daily averaged OP exposure of OP v DTT was driven by the OC-rich source (0.065 nmol min −1 m −3 ), whereas Industry drove the OP v AA (0.068 nmol min −1 m −3 ). Values for both of these sources were three times lower than the highest-ranked source in BCN ( which was attributed to the sulfate-rich source by (Borlaza et al, 2021b), whereas in our solution it was identified as a main tracer of Industry. In our study, the Pearson correlation with K bb was moderate (r = 0.42), showing that biomass burning can be an important driver of OP v AA at this station; however, without a clear identification of a biomass burning source, the actual impact of the source on human health could not be accurately determined.…”

“…It has been suggested that measuring indicators of the oxidative stress of PM, such as OP, might help to identify some of the many possible drivers of the associated health effects (Daellenbach et al, 2020). Although this link remains subject to relevant uncertainty (Bates et al, 2015;Daellenbach et al, 2020;Weichenthal et al, 2016), it has been applied in a number of studies (e.g., Abbasi et al, 2020;Borlaza et al, 2021aBorlaza et al, , 2021bCalas et al, 2018Calas et al, , 2019Cesari et al, 2019;Charrier et al, 2015;Daellenbach et al, 2020;Gulliver et al, 2018;Janssen et al, 2014;Li et al, 2019;Naraki et al, 2021;Trechera et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2018;Weber et al, 2018Weber et al, , 2019.…”

Cellulose in atmospheric particulate matter at rural and urban sites across France and Switzerland

“…Secondly, PM 10 and PM 2.5 samples could be obtained from a monitoring campaign at the Observatoire Pérenne de l'Environnement (ANDRA-OPE), in northern France (http: //ope.andra.fr/index.php?, last access: 15 March 2021). Samples have been collected continuously for about a decade at this site (Golly et al, 2019;Borlaza et al, 2021c), but cellulose measurements were conducted and presented in this Last but not least, simultaneous PM 10 and PM 2.5 filter samples were taken across five sites in Switzerland, as part of an Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) monitoring campaign (Grange et al, 2021). These sites varied in characteristics and were sampled for 1 year (from June 2018 to May 2019).…”

Decoupling impacts of weather conditions on interannual variations in concentrations of criteria air pollutants in South China – constraining analysis uncertainties by using multiple analysis tools

“…In the literature, the multiple linear regression (MLR) method is considered the simplest approach to decouple the effects of meteorological factors from changed emissions on the trends in air pollutant concentrations (Borlaza et al, 2022;Chen et al, 2020;Otero et al, 2018;Zhai et al, 2019). However, the MLR analysis sometimes suffers from the auto-correlation inherently existing between different meteorological parameters (Yao et al, 2009).…”