Elemental composition of urban aerosol collected in Florence, Italy

Abstract

An extensive investigation is in progress aiming at the characterisation of the air particulate composition in Florence. For our investigation, we use the external PIXE-PIGE beam facility of the I.N.F.N. Van de Graaff accelerator at the Physics Department of the Florence University. In order to gather information on both the longer- and shorter-time trends of the aerosol elemental composition, we are analysing both long temporal series (about 1 year) of 24-h Millipore filters collected by the health authorities in 3 different sites, and filters collected simultaneously in two of the above sites for about one month, by two streakers with one-hour resolution, providing size fractionation between particle size smaller than 2.5 μm and from 2.5 μm to 10 μm. The streakers sampling period includes two days during which the Municipality of Florence has banned the circulation of non-catalytic cars, due to the increase of NO2 above the 'recommended safety values'. We present here the first obtained results for the sampling site located near a heavy traffic road.