Particle-Bound PAHs and Elements in a Highly Industrialized City in Southern Italy: PM2.5 Chemical Characterization and Source Apportionment after the Implementation of Governmental Measures for Air Pollution Mitigation and Control

Abstract

<jats:p>The present study was aimed at determining airborne concentrations of PAHs, Nitro-/Oxy-PAHs and elements in industrial and urban areas of Taranto, a site of environmental risk in Southern Italy, after the issue of strategic measures for air pollution mitigation and control by the Italian Environment Ministry in 2012. A PM2.5 sampling campaign was carried out from 9 to 28 December 2014 at eight receptor sites, two placed in the urban settlement and five included in the high spatial resolution fence monitoring network of the biggest European steel plant. The integration of collected data with meteorological parameters and source apportionment analysis by Positive Matrix Factorization and bivariate polar plots allowed to discriminate among emission sources and estimate their contributions. Evidence on the effect of distinct processes (homogenization, sintering) occurring inside the steel plant on airborne concentrations of PAHs and selected elements was provided. The impact of emissions from the steel plant “core” on the surrounding area was observed at receptor sites downwind to it. Moreover, the extent of the effectiveness of mitigation measures, partially applied at the moment of study’s beginning, was demonstrated by mean and peak pollutant concentrations at all receptor sites up to one order of magnitude lower than those documented prior to 2012.</jats:p>

Chemical characterisation of PM10 from ship emissions: a study on samples from hydrofoil exhaust stacks

“…Six-level-based calibration curves were constructed for each PAH within the dynamic concentration range 0.5-12.5 ng/ml. The analytical performance of the whole procedure (extraction recovery, extraction linearity, analytical repeatability, LOD) was verified in previous studies (Palmisani et al 2020). Finally, due to co-elution, anthracene and phenanthrene were not quantified separately, and therefore the sums of the anthracene + phenanthrene concentrations were determined.…”

“…The internal standard mix contained 8 elements: scandium (Sc), germanium (Ge), rhodium (Rh), indium (In), terbium (Tb), holmium (Ho), lithium (Li) and bismuth (Bi) at 10 mg/L. The standard was purchased from CPA Chem and was used at 10 ppb in nitric acid at 0.6% v/v (Palmisani et al 2020;Amodio et al 2014).…”

Development of an Online Instrument for Continuous Gaseous PAH Quantification: Laboratory Evaluation and Comparison with The Offline Reference UHPLC-Fluorescence Method

“…Their individual atmospheric concentrations are relatively low and typically in the range of pg/m 3 to ng/m 3 [12][13][14]. Even in the vicinity of industrial sites, individual concentrations of PAH remain in the ng/m 3 range [15].…”