There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Daily time series measurements of elements or compounds are widely used to apportion
the contribution of specific sources of particulate matter concentration in the atmosphere.
We present results obtained for the urban area of Genoa (Italy) based on several hundred
of PM10, PM2.5 and PM1 daily samples collected in sites with different geo-morphological
and urbanization characteristics. Elemental concentrations of Na to Pb were obtained
through Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence (ED-XRF), and the contributions of specific
sources of particulate matter (PM) concentration were apportioned through Positive
Matrix Factorization (PMF). By sampling at different sites we were able to obtain,
in each PM fraction, the average and stable values for the tracers of specific sources,
in particular traffic (Cu, Zn, Pb) and heavy oil combustion (V, Ni). We could also
identify and quote the contamination of anthropogenic PM in "natural" sources (sea,
soil dust). Sampling at several sites in the same urban area allowed us to resolve
local characteristics as well as to quote average values.