Abstract
The purpose of this study was to establish total and bioavailable contents of chemical elements in attic dust and their distribution in the area of the town of Kavadarci, Republic of Macedonia, and in this way to evaluate the exposure of population to toxic metals in areas with high industrial influences from the ferro-nickel smelter plant. The attic dust is derived predominantly from external sources such as aerosol deposits and soil dusting, and less from household activities. From that reason attic dust could be accepted as a tracer of historical aerosol pollution. All attic dust samples were analyzed for total and bioavailable element contents and their distribution in studied area. Several extraction agents recognized as representative for elements bioa-vailability assessment were applied to attic dust samples under investigations – phosphate buffer solutions that simulate human blood, for the simulation of lung inhalation carbonate buffer was used and 0.1 mol l–1 HCl solution to simulate stomach ingestion. A total of 18 elements (Ag, Al, As, B, Ba, Ca, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe K, Mg, Mn, Ni, Pb, Sr and Zn) were determined by atomic emission spectrometry with inductively coupled plas-ma (AES-ICP). The obtained results showed relatively high proportion of toxic elements bioavailability in the attic dusts samples from sites close to the metallurgical activities (Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb and Zn), most probably due to the small size and high reactivity of the particles of attic dust. As might be expected the highest leacha-ble amounts of toxic elements were found for Ni, Co, Cr and Pb from attic dust in the extraction solution of HCl (0.1 mol l–1 HCl) compared with the other 3 extraction media. Discussion on trace elements mobility and bioavailability related to environmental pollution and effects on human health are presented.
Highlights
The increased industrial activities lead to a rising level of urban environmental pollution
The subject of this study is to investigate the degree of air pollution in the town of Kavadarci and its surrounding through analysis of attic dust samples
The descriptive statistics of the analyzed element concentrations in the attic dust samples collected in 10 houses from the investigated area (Figure 1) are summarized
Summary
The increased industrial activities lead to a rising level of urban environmental pollution. Atmospheric deposition of toxic metals is the main subject of many studies and usually takes place in industrialized areas, where exploitation and processing of natural resources (ore, oil, etc.) are performed [1]. Principal component analysis (PCA) is a statistical method to classify the relations between the measured variables, i.e. it linearly compresses a set of main data to an essentially smaller set of new, uncorrelated variables which represent most information in the main data set. From the values of A and E, it is shown that the data more or less are following the normal distribution. Is it because there is a constant pollution level in all the area?
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