Urban air pollution by nanoparticles in Ostrava region

Abstract

Air pollution harms human health and the environment. Ostrava's agglomeration and its immediate vicinity suffer regular exceeding of air pollution limits due to its geomorphologic location and present heavy industry. Maximum exceedances of air quality standards and especially PM10 which 24 hour limit value is in EU 50μg.m-3, must not be exceeded more than 35 days per year. This limit is being still often exceeded. In the year 2011 such as situation occurred 126 times. It is very important then for identify sources of air pollution to find out maximum information about air borne dust, like size distribution, chemical composition of individual size fractions, morphology of particulate matter together with other parameters like meteorological conditions, year season etc. Our measurement started two years ago. We focus on the critical situation when there are values of PM10 over a long period above the limit. In winter season it is so called inversion. By default, during the campaign it is measured size distribution of air born dust in range 5.6 nm -560nm by FMPS and using the sampler NanoId are collected samples in range 1nm-35μm in 12 size fractions for chemical analysis and morphological observations. This contribution deals with results of size distributions only. © IOP Publishing Ltd 2013.