The monitoring and evaluation of air quality is a topic of great global interest as, with the decline of air quality, there are negative effects on human health and ecosystems. Thus, the purpose of this paper was to evaluate the air quality over 11 years, in the period 2011–2021, in four cities in Romania, reported as most polluted, namely, Brasov, Cluj-Napoca, Iasi, and Timisoara. Pollutants of interest included arsenic, carbon monoxide, and PM2.5. The measured concentrations of the selected pollutants were collected from the National Environmental Protection Agency public reports. The database considered the daily measurements for the selected pollutants, from three monitoring stations in each city so that the air quality and trends for the last 11 years and impact assessment could be developed. Therefore, the input data were statistically analyzed to identify the trends of air quality, and then, on this basis, the environmental impacts and risks and health hazards were quantified. High concentrations of PM2.5 were recorded for Iasi city, while for Timisoara city, significant concentrations of arsenic were reported. The results regarding the air quality aggregate index, air pollution index, and health hazard index were in the regular range, but in the case of sensitive, vulnerable targets such as children, they were triple compared to adults. The results show that the alert threshold value for PM2.5 was exceeded every year in all four cities, while in the case of Timisoara city, the arsenic air pollution proved to be at a significant level with a major risk for human health.
The importance of air quality monitoring has been strongly demonstrated in numerous scientific studies. This study, carried out in an intense circular intersection, brings additional arguments that the monitoring of the fine particles like PM1 and PM2.5 that influence in more than 80% the concentration of PM10 particles must be measured at several points. Few were the cases [approx. 20%] in which the increase of PM10 concentrations is given by particles with diameters from 2.5 to 10 μm, most likely caused by the re-suspension of dust particles. Grimm Aerosol Technik Germany and SC INOESY SRL conducted a campaign for monitoring the air quality [PM1, PM2.5, PM10] in Iasi, Stone Bridge area, from 8 to 22 February 2018. The monitoring point was located close (150 m) to the APMIS-01 station of the National Environmental Protection Agency.
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