Abstract
It is well documented that Southern Poland is one of the most polluted areas in Europe due to the highest airborne concentrations of particulate matter (PM). Concentrations of fine particles are especially high in winter. Apart from detailed number concentrations, it is essential to accurately identify and quantify specific particulate pollution sources. Only a few Polish research centers are involved in such experiments—among them is Krakow research group. For the most part, research focuses on collecting 24-h average samples from stationary PM samplers at ambient monitoring sites and quantifying the specific elements and chemical constituents in PM. This approach includes modeling methods that can use the variability in physical and chemical PM characteristics as an input dataset to identify possible sources of the particles. The objective of this paper is to provide research results based on data collected from June 2018 to May 2019 from a single monitoring station at a central urban site. Careful comparison of data obtained prior to a 2019 law prohibiting solid fuel burning in the city of Krakow with data (2019–2020) when a regulation went into effect should indicate progress by noting lower PM levels. This work has shown that the method applied and Krakow results might be of interest to the broader community in regions of high PM concentration.
Highlights
The high concentration of airborne particulate matter (APM) is a global problem that is associated with exacerbated human health risks
Methods based on statistical evaluation of PM chemical data acquired at receptor sites
There is Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF), which is a result of the works of Paatero and Tapper [14], and is an advanced source-receptor method of analysis
Summary
The high concentration of airborne particulate matter (APM) is a global problem that is associated with exacerbated human health risks. Airborne PM may be responsible for cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, but first of all, it is responsible for excessive mortality. In Europe alone, the excess in annual mortality rate due to ambient air pollution is about 412,000 [1]. It is well-known that PM, which is a chemically non-specific pollutant, can originate from varied emission sources and have diverse chemical composition [2]. The health effects of PM are thought to be strongly related to particle size. Note that fine particles have more adverse effects, since they can penetrate deeper into the respiratory tract than coarse particles [3,4]. PM2.5 (fine particles) refers to particles less than
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