Assessment of PM₂.₅ and PM₁ chemical profile in a multiple-impacted Mediterranean urban area: origin, sources and...

Airborne particulate matter in the PM2.5 and PM1 size ranges has been sampled at three sites within the Mediterranean urban area of the Athens Basin, representing background, roadside-industrialized and coastal background locations. With the principal aim to identify the sources and discriminate the contribution of the regional input versus the local one, simultaneous chemical characterization with respect to carbonaceous and ionic species was also carried out on the collected samples. In general, the average recorded values were within the Mediterranean concentration range. The constant prevalence of the ionic mass (52%-79%) over one of the carbonaceous, being combined with the occurrence of its maximum rates at the coastal background environment (74%-79% and 73%-77% for PM2.5 and PM1, respectively) leads to the hypothesis that the fine PM pollution in the basin, especially for the remote locations, is evidently governed by the external intrusion. Even at the polluted atmosphere of the roadside-industrialized environment, the PM mass was regionally originated, with the corresponding input reaching up to 87% (northward flow). Applying factor analysis on the PM2.5 database it came obvious that the sources which were responsible for the configured PM burden were not fully differentiated not only between the different types of environment but also between the exceedances and the clean air events. The contribution of the secondary, marine and combustion processes was constant at all the stations of the network, while a continuous input of crustal particles characterized both the roadside-industrialized and the coastal atmosphere. Finally, the episodic values show a general common signal of secondary mixed ΡΜ emissions, high influence of both regional and local pollution spikes, confirming the earlier findings for the significance of transportation.