Assessment of the air pollution level in the city of Rome (Italy)

Abstract

Exposure to pollutants is usually higher in cities than in the countryside. Generally, in the urban areas pollution sources as traffic, power generator and domestic heating system are more intense and spatially distributed. The pollutants can be classified as a function of long-term toxicological effects due to an exposure and inhalation. In the present work, several kinds of pollutants concentration generated in Rome during 2015 have been analyzed applying different advanced post-processing technique. In particular, statistic and cross-statistic have been computed in time and phase space domain. As main result, it is observed, as expected, that all the pollutant concentrations increase during the winter season into a couple of time ranges despite of [O3] that has high values in summer. It can be clearly concluded that Rome has a strongly unsteady behaviour in terms of a family of pollutant concentration, which fluctuate significantly. It is worth noticing that there is a strong linear dependence between [C6H6] and [NO] and a more complex interdependence of [O3] and [C6H6]. Qualitatively is provided that, to a reduction of [C6H6] under a certain threshold level corresponds an increase of [O3].