Characterization and spatiotemporal variation of urban ambient dust fallout in central India

Abstract

Earlier studies on air pollution measurements found that significant dust fallout is a severe problem in central India, with levels of fine particulate matter being several time higher than the prescribed limits. This study mainly examined the spatiotemporal variation and source apportionment of ambient dust fallout (coarser dust particles size > 20 micron) in urban areas of central India. This paper deals the spatiotemporal variation of dust fallout at ambient levels of environmentally defined urban receptors. The dust fallout levels were found to be in the range of 13.73 ± 5.46 to 78.82 ± 34.81 g/m2/month; two to five-fold higher than earlier measurements in same region during 1999-2000. The spatiotemporal variation of dust fallout levels across the selected environmentally defined urban zones was found to be 89%, and the different spatial variabilities of 24 chemical constituents of the dust fallout found in this work indicate the complexity of its source signatures. Statistical boxplots of longitudinal data of dust fall chemical constituents are also carried out to assess the means and outliers among different percentile levels. © Taiwan Association for Aerosol Research.