Impact of urban, suburban and industrial background on air pollution levels of dust substances in North-Eastern part of Krakow (Poland)

Air pollution in urban-industrial areas is caused by simultaneous impact of many factors, including different types of emission sources. Ambient air quality in Krakow is a crucial problem regarding the regularly occurring exceedances of limit values of particulate matter and some of its chemical compounds. This paper presents quantification of urban, suburban and industrial background of dust substances concentrations that are present in the industrialized area, located in the vicinity of scattered household and road traffic emission sources. There were included the concentrations of such substances as: particulate matter (PM10), benzo(a)pyrene, arsenic, cadmium, lead and nickel. The impact of daytime and season of the year (especially heating and non-heating season) on variability of air pollutant concentrations was examined. In order to distinguish between local and inflow background of air pollutants the additional meteorological data concerning wind speed and direction was considered. The performed analyses included application of statistical methods, among others principal component analysis (PCA). Some of the results were visualized via R programming environment, providing tools for air pollution data processing (openair package). The backward trajectories modelling using HYSPLIT model, allowed the validation of wind direction analyses. The conducted research revealed the strong dependence of air pollution background type influencing the measurement results on instantaneous wind direction.

Automated summary

This study quantifies the concentrations of dust substances in urban, suburban, and industrial areas, revealing a strong dependence of air pollution background type on the measurement results, especially with respect to instantaneous wind direction.