Abstract
Mosses are one of the best bioindicators in the assessment of atmospheric aerosol pollution by heavy metals. Studies using mosses allow both short- and long-term air quality monitoring. The increasing contamination of the environment (including air) is causing a search for new, cheap and effective methods of monitoring its condition. Once such method is the use of mosses in active biomonitoring. The aim of the study was to assess the atmospheric aerosol pollution with selected heavy metals (Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd, Hg and Pb) from the smoke of fireworks used during New Year’s Eve in the years 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. In studies a biomonitoring moss-bag method with moss Pleurozium schreberi (Willd. ex Brid.) Mitt. genus Pleurozium was used. The research was conducted in the town Prószków (5 km in south direction from Opole, opolskie voivodship, Poland). The moss was exposed 14 days before 31 December (from 17 to 30 of December), on New Year’s Eve (31 December and 1 January) and 2 weeks after the New Year (from 2–15 January). Higher concentrations of analysed elements were determined in samples exposed during New Year’s Eve. Increases in concentrations were demonstrated by analysis of the Relative Accumulation Factor (RAF). The results indicate that the use of fireworks during New Year’s Eve causes an increase in air pollution with heavy metals. In addition, it was shown that the COVID-19 induced restrictions during New Year’s Eve 2020 resulted in a reduction of heavy metal content in moss samples and thus in lower atmospheric aerosol pollution with these analytes. The study confirmed moss usefulness in monitoring of atmospheric aerosol pollution from point sources.
Highlights
Air quality in Poland is one of the most important research topics concerning atmospheric aerosol pollution [1,2,3]
The mean concentrations of determined heavy metals naturally accumulated in mosses exposed during the first year of the study were for: Ni—
The results presented here represent the first environmental experiment using the moss-bag technique to determine the concentrations of heavy metals accumulated by mosses during New Year’s Eve, together with the impact of the pandemic on air pollution at this time using active moss biomonitoring
Summary
Air quality in Poland is one of the most important research topics concerning atmospheric aerosol pollution [1,2,3]. Among the different types of pollutants involved in the overall atmospheric aerosol contamination, short-lasting but active point sources of pollution should be considered [12,13], which include fireworks shows [14]. This is one of the most unusual sources of air pollution, which has been investigated quite frequently and on a large scale in the literature [15,16,17] which allows the identification of specific pollutants related only to the burning of fireworks [18,19]. The environmental pollution burden is enormous in terms of sudden increases in pollution by selected heavy metals, PM of various fractions and negative health effects [18,20]
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