Abstract
Air pollution by particulate matter (PM) is recognized as a one of the most important environmental issue. A particular attention is being paid to fine PM fraction (PM2.5, PM1.0) due to its detrimental impact on human health and long-term persistence in the air. Presented work is an in-depth bibliometric study on the concentrations and chemical composition of PM2.5 among 27 rural and 38 urban/urban background stations dispersed across the Europe. Obtained results indicate that the chemical composition of PM2.5, in terms of mass concentrations and percentage contribution of main chemical constituents, is relatively different in various parts of Europe. Urban and urban background stations are typically characterized by higher share of total carbon (TC) in PM2.5, compared to rural background sites, mostly pronounced during the heating periods. The share of the secondary inorganic aerosol (SIA) is typically higher at rural background stations, especially in North-Western Europe. In general, the relative contribution of SIA in PM2.5 mass, both at rural and urban background stations, showed more or less pronounced seasonal variation, opposite to Polish measurement sites. Moreover, Poland stands out from the majority of the European stations by strong dominance of total carbon over secondary inorganic aerosol.
Highlights
Particulate matter (PM), often defined as atmospheric aerosol, is a general concept used for a mixture of solid or liquid particles suspended in the air, including organic and inorganic substances, volatile and non-volatile compounds, both water-soluble and insoluble, with different chemical, physical and thermodynamic properties [1,2,3]
Sufficient time coverage—only long-term measurements were taken into account, with some exceptions regarding to specific season of the year; Full chemical characteristics of PM2.5 —understand as full information on ionic and carbon composition; Seasonal variability of PM2.5 concentrations and chemical compositions—we focused on the scientific works in which the chemical composition of PM2.5 was considered in a seasonal approach
The concentrations of PM2.5 registered both at rural (Table 1) and urban background stations (Table 2), varied within wide range of values. Considering data for the former type of stations, it can be observed that the concentrations of PM2.5 in Złoty Potok were visibly higher compared to the values registered on most of the European rural sites, especially during the heating period
Summary
Particulate matter (PM), often defined as atmospheric aerosol, is a general concept used for a mixture of solid or liquid particles suspended in the air, including organic and inorganic substances, volatile and non-volatile compounds, both water-soluble and insoluble, with different chemical, physical and thermodynamic properties [1,2,3]. These substances can originate from natural sources (erosion of rocks, soil resuspension, desert dust, volcanic eruptions, sea spray or biological aerosol) and/or anthropogenic activities (combustion of fossil fuels and biomass, waste incineration, high-temperature industrial processes, road abrasion, transport and municipal sources, etc.) [4] and many of them have a documented negative impact on human health [5,6,7], climate [8,9], ecosystems [10].
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