Assessment of contribution of metal pollution sources to attic and household dust in Pb‐polluted area

Abstract

Attic and household dusts from Pb‐polluted area were investigated using various analytical techniques for source apportionment and assessment of source contribution of metal‐bearing phases. Mineralogically, attic dust consists of gypsum, anhydrite, and metal‐bearing phases, while household dust comprises C‐bearing particles and only minor metal‐bearing phases. Sulfur isotope composition of sulfides and sulfates in attic dust shows that they result from past primary smelting of local sulfide ore, while those in household dust originate directly from local mine‐waste material. Pb isotope ratios show that Pb‐bearing phases in both dust types mostly originate from mining and primary smelting of local Pb‐ore. Individual metal‐bearing particles were apportioned by their composition, morphology, and mineralogy to phases from past Pb‐smelting, present‐day Pb‐recycling, and past mining/mine‐waste mechanical processing. Calculated source contribution of metal‐bearing phases to indoor dust showed that primary Pb‐smelting was important pollution source in the past, while active Pb‐recycling has contributed only negligible amount of material so far. However, material from mining/mine‐waste processing is an important currently active pollution source. Study demonstrated that simultaneous investigation of characteristics and isotopic composition of metal‐bearing phases in different indoor dust types serves as tool for assessment of source contribution of past and recent airborne metal pollution.

Multi-elemental profile and enviromagnetic analysis of moss transplants exposed indoors and outdoors in Italy and Belgium

“…In this site, located at 400 m from an industrial area (a non-ferrous metallurgical industry and a cement industry) in the south of Antwerp city, several elements of environmental concern were found in the present study at the highest concentrations, such as Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb and Sb, in addition to Ag, suggesting it as the most polluted site. Moreover, the presence of Zn in outdoor ANT sites could be due to organic matter degradation in urban parks near the study area; Zn is a micronutrient, therefore, it is commonly found in fertilizers and organic matter (Montalvo et al, 2016). However, Zn has also been identified in Flanders as related with traffic-emitted pollutants, such as elemental carbon, Cu, Cr and Fe (Vercauteren et al, 2011).…”

“…For those elements showing significant indoor-outdoor correlation and higher concentration in indoor moss (as observed in some sites for Al, Si and Co), progressive indoor accumulation due to a repeated entrance from outdoors (magnification) could be a conceivable explanation. In papers investigating indoor metal pollution by active samplers (e.g., Miler and Gosar, 2019;Pekey et al, 2010), element concentrations are expressed in mg per volume of air; therefore, a direct comparison between element concentrations is not feasible and the only parameter useful for comparison is the non-dimensional I/O ratio. In both the above mentioned articles, according to the I/O ratio, the authors found that metal-bearing particles were more abundant outdoors than indoors, consolidating our findings.…”

“…parks, roads, industrial and commercial settlements) and the indoor environments, where people live and spend most time, also due to the quickly changing mobility habits imposed by the recent Covid-19 pandemic. There is a lack of knowledge in this regard, since most published papers investigating air pollution quality indoors are based on active samplers (e.g., Huang et al, 2007;Miler and Gosar, 2019). The transplant approach has been applied to detect metal indoor pollution in some previous works (Al-Radady et al, 1993, 1994Motyka et al, 2013), as well as outdoor metal pollution near houses (Rivera et al, 2011).…”

“…There is a lack of knowledge in this regard, since most published papers investigating air pollution quality indoors are based on active samplers (e.g., Huang et al, 2007;Miler and Gosar, 2019). The transplant approach has been applied to detect metal indoor pollution in some previous works (Al-Radady et al, 1993, 1994Motyka et al, 2013), as well as outdoor metal pollution near houses (Rivera et al, 2011). A comparison between indoor and outdoor pollution, to try disentangling the specific contamination sources at the same sites, was attempted in only very few works (Canha et al, 2014;Capozzi et al, 2019;Zechmeister et al, 2020).…”

Biogeochemistry of Household Dust Samples Collected from Private Homes of a Portuguese Industrial City

“…Dust chemical/mineralogical composition is very variable and depends heavily on pathways and modes of introduction of pollutants into an indoor environment [16]. Minerals such as quartz and asbestos have toxic features that, despite numerous experimental studies in the field, their mechanisms of toxicity have not yet been fully clarified [17].…”