Sources of airborne particulates (PM₁₀) in the port city of Rijeka, Croatia

The air quality monitoring in Rijeka started in the early 1970s and has been oriented to air pollution caused by the big industrial sources (new petroleum refinery, oil burning power plant, coke plant), while maritime traffic was neglected. First emission inventory comprising port emission was done only in 2008 indicating similar level of emissions as road traffic. Further analyses on maritime impact were done within MED project POSEIDON. This was the good opportunity to perform positive matrix factorization (PMF) analysis on airborne particulate data and identify principal sources of pollution within the Rijeka urban area. PMF analyses of PM₁₀ collected from the urban background site in the period 2008-2010 identified 5 factors: biomass burning, secondary sulphates, sea spray, road/soil dust and metal industry/traffic. Condition probability functions (CPF) obtained from PMF factors of dust and secondary sulphates indicate that Ca, Fe, Zn and Cu originate from harbour area due to reloading of fertilizers and metal waste, as well as SO₄^2- and NH₄⁺ pointing to maritime corridor leading to the Rijeka harbour. These data could not quantify the maritime impact on the air quality, but gave the first estimation of contribution of various sources to air pollution within the Rijeka Bay area. The maritime contribution to air quality was estimated in other part of the same project, as primary PM_2.5 emission obtained from vanadium. Both primary PM_2.5 emission and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbon profiles indicated reduced economic activity, including maritime traffic, during economic crisis in the period 2008-2012.