Pollutant concentrations in fog and low cloud water at selected sites of the Czech Republic

Abstract

In this paper, the basic composition of fog and low cloud water are presented, resulting from the analyses of water samples from 111 fog/cloud events. The samples were collected at five sites located in various regions of the Czech Republic. Two sampling sites are in mountainous regions and three sites represent various urban areas. The mountain stations are located in two regions of the Czech Republic with different industry types. At all the sites, active fog collectors were employed. In the water samples, the conductivity, acidity (pH), cations (H +, Na +, K +, NH 4 +, Mg 2+, Ca 2+) and anions (F −, Cl −, NO 3 −, SO 4 2−) were determined. A mean pH value of about 4.5 was obtained at mountain sites whereas the measurements in urban areas showed mean pH values from 4.9 to 6.4. The mean conductivity values in the samples from the two mountain stations were 137 and 191.5 μS cm −1. The samples from urban sites showed mean values between 127.7 and 654.4 μS cm −1. The maximum concentration means for the three dominant pollutants (expressed by the ratio mountain sites/urban sites) are 32.9/99.6 mg l −1 for NO 3 −, 32.5/192.9 mg l −1 for SO 4 2− and 18.5/52.7 mg l −1 for NH 4 +. As expected, we found higher ion concentrations in the northern part of the Czech Republic where larger numbers of lignite-burning power plants, chemical factories and opencast lignite mines are located. A decrease in ion concentrations was observed at higher altitude sites, probably reflecting at least in part higher liquid water contents at these locations.