PM10 samples were collected in Civitavecchia (Rome, Italy) during a monitoring campaign performed between August and September 2008; elemental, ionic and organic characterisation of the samples was carried out. Three receptor models (Chemical Mass Balance, Absolute Principal Component Scores and Positive Matrix Factorisation) were applied to identify PM10 sources and their contributions. The results obtained by the models were compared in order to perform a robust characterisation of the sources.Seven emission sources were considered relevant for the area under investigation and their profiles were used to run CMB. Source percentage contributions to the total particulate matter samples were evaluated: the greater contribution was obtained for Traffic (39%), the lower for Marine Aerosol (3%).Five factors were selected to perform the multivariate receptor models (APCS and PMF) after the application of explorative Principal Component Analysis to the dataset. Furthermore, attention was focused on the characterisation of source profiles and contributions obtained by PMF because it best reconstructed the PM mass of the samples.The percentage contributions of the five sources to the total PM samples were estimated: the greater contribution was obtained for resuspended matter (22%), the lower for combustions (17%).The results of the source apportionment studies can be used by air quality managers to develop appropriate control strategy. However, the differences in sources profiles and weights obtained by the models were related to their specific approaches: further investigations are suggested in order to develop sources profiles more reliable for the area under investigation. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Chemical composition data (ionic fraction, carbonaceous compounds and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) for PM2.5 were acquired during 2005–2007 years by seasonal sampling campaigns performed at six urban sites in Apulia Region. In addition, an industrial site was considered. Discriminant Function Analysis, Principal Component Analysis and Absolute Principal Component Scores were applied to dataset in order to identify PM2.5 sources and to estimate their contributions to samples mass. Three main sources were obtained for the urban sites: combustion processes, natural sources and secondary particulate. Moreover, the application of Principal Component Analysis on chemical and meteorological data highlighted the influence of temperature and relative humidity on natural sources, and the relevance of pressure on secondary particulate content. In PM2.5, secondary particulate contributed on average with 78% to total mass, while combustion processes and natural sources accounted, respectively, 15% and 6.5% of the fine fraction mass. For this reason the secondary background should be taken into account in order to suggest the efficient abatement strategies to improve local air quality in South of Italy.

A BTEX monitoring campaign, consisting of two weekly periods, was carried out in Bari, south-eastern Italy, in order to evaluate the impact of the vehicular traffic on the air quality at the main access roads of the city. Twenty-one sampling sites were selected: the pollution produced by the traffic in the vicinity of all exits from the ring road and some access roads to the city, those with higher traffic density, were monitored. Contemporarily the main meteorological parameters (ambient temperature, wind, atmospheric pressure and natural radioactivity) were investigated. It was found that in the same traffic conditions, barriers, buildings and local meteorological conditions can have important effects on the atmospheric dispersion of pollutants. This situation is more critical in downtown where narrow roads and high buildings avoid an efficient dispersion producing higher levels of BTEX. High spatial resolution monitoring allowed both detecting the most critical areas of the city with high precision and obtaining information on the mean level of pollution, meaning air quality standard of the city. The same concentration pattern and the correlation among BTEX levels in all sites confirmed the presence of a single source, the vehicular traffic, having a strong impact on air quality.

In this preliminary work the toxic activity of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) mix standard solutions was studied using "Caenorhabditis elegans" (C ele gans) as system for biological studies The nematode cultures were exposed for 3 days to 001, 01 and 1 ppb (ng/ml) of PAH Mix and even if no morphological alterations were observed on the C elegans populations, the lethality was about 50% when the PAHs concentrations were equal to 0 1 and 1 ppb Moreover, the lethality test was performed using an organic extract from a PM10 sample When the gene expression pattern was analyzed a down regulation of the expression on all the genes considered was observed, indicating that the genotoxic effect was scattered on the entire transcription mechanism These results indicate that "C elegans" is an effective model for the study of PAHs toxicity, future studies will be oriented to the toxicity evaluation of extracts from PM2 5 and PM10 samples collected in Apulia cities

Chemical mass balance modeling (CMB) was applied to determine the PM10 sources and their contributions. PM10 samples were collected in Lecce (40.338N, 18.108E, a town of South Italy), during two monitoring campaigns performed on July 2005 and February 2006. Nine source profiles and average mass concentration of the following chemical parameters: elemental carbon (EC), organic carbon (OC), chlorine (Cl-), nitrate (NO3-), sulfate (SO42-), sodium (Na+), ammonium (NH4+), potassium (K+), magnesium (Mg2+), calcium (Ca2+), aluminum (Al), silicon (Si), titanium (Ti), vanadium (V), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn) were used to run the CMB model. The results obtained by application of CMB8.2 are shown. The contributions to PM10 show that dominant contributor was traffic with 37% followed by petroleum industry with 19% and field burning with 16%. Minor source contributions were marine aerosol (1%), ammonium sulfate production (4%), ammonium nitrate production (11%), oil-fired power plant (0.1%), gypsum handling (10%) and crustal (2%).Moreover, the Absolute Principal Component Scores (APCS) model was applied to the PM10 samples collected in order to find a correlation between the two source profile sets. With APCS model five source profiles were found and a good correlation (correlation coefficient bigger than 0.8) between crustal, marine, industrial profiles of CMB model and the corresponding ones of APCS model was found.

The chemical composition of PM 10 and PM 2.5 samples collected during two seasonal monitoring campaigns at residential, urban and industrial Apulia Region- sites was investigated. Ionic fraction, carbonaceous compounds and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons were determined for all samples. High correlations among PM data collected in the investigated sites suggested the regional character of particulate matter. It was also confirmed by five days back trajectories analysis. Moreover, no significant seasonal trend in PM mass concentration was observed in the investigated sites. These results, relevant for the area under investigations, were not observed in the North of Italy and Europe and allow to conclude that PM 10 and PM 2.5 cannot be considered ‘good’ indicators for the evaluation of local anthropic contributions to air quality. On the contrary, the high levels of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons found in Taranto sampling sites suggested that PAHs can be a better indicator for this purpose. This result is also relevant in order to weigh the importance of industrial area and to suggest right policy control to decision makers.

The present work studied how much the meteorological parameters and the emission sources can influence the particulate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (Invalid Journal Information PAHs) concentrations in two areas located in Southern Italy (Bari and Taranto). It was found that when the vehicular traffic is the main source of PAHs, there is a negative correlation between ambient temperature, wind speed and PAHs concentration (Bari). This is because these parameters are generally correlated with the dispersion capacity of the atmosphere. In the presence of a large industrial area, the wind direction becomes an important parameter able to determinate large changes in PAHs concentrations. This happened in Taranto where PAHs concentrations are exceptionally high. During the study the seasonal trend of particulate PAHs and PM10 was compared. PM10 did not show a significant seasonal cycle during the year because it is conditioned from a high regional aerosol background, especially during the summertime. On the contrary, particulate PAHs exerted distinct seasonal variation with higher concentrations in the winter and lower concentration during other months of the year. This evidence suggested that PAHs concentrations can be considered a more reliable index for air-quality assessment. In order to identify an index that considers the contributions of other particulate PAHs, it is necessary to calculate the carcinogenic potency of total PAHs (i.e., total BaPeq) obtained by the sum of the benzo[a]pyrene equivalent concentration (BaPeq) for each PAH.

UNLABELLED:A weekly monitoring campaign of volatile organic compounds (VOC), with single sampling of 24 h, was carried out in non-residential indoor environments such as libraries, pharmacies, offices, gymnasiums, etc., in order to evaluate the VOC concentrations to which people are exposed. Moreover, an outdoor sample was coupled to each indoor site to point out the influence of indoor sources. They were sampled with Radiello diffusive samplers for thermal desorption and analyzed by GC-MS. As already described in other papers, the VOC levels of most of the indoor sites were higher than that observed in the corresponding outdoor sites. For example, some sites showed a level of pollution that is ten times higher than their corresponding outdoor site. The monitored environments that had higher concentrations of the investigated VOC were the pharmacies, a newspaper stand, a copy center, and the coffee shops. Analysis of the weekly average concentrations of each pollutant and the use of literature allowed pointing out some site-specific characteristics that singled out possible sources of VOC. These results were verified analyzing the indoor-outdoor ratio (I/O) too. Newspaper stands were characterized by very high concentrations of toluene and pharmacies were characterized by high concentrations of aromatic compounds.PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS:Indoor air pollution caused by volatile organic compounds (VOC) might affect human health at home as well as in public and commercial buildings. The main VOC sources in indoor environments are human activities, personal care products, smoking, house cleaning products, building products, and outside pollution. To preserve human health it is necessary to evaluate the average concentrations of VOC to which people are exposed and to identify the main sources of indoor pollution by means of suitable indoor monitoring campaigns in several environments. These investigations allow pointing out the characteristic critical situations of some indoor environments or some other types of environments.

The technique of thermal desorption (TD)–GC/MS was evaluated for measuring airborne, 4–6 ring polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) collected onto quartz filters. TD provides a more readily automated and sensitive alternative to traditional solvent extraction, decreasing the time/cost of analysis and reducing the risk of analyte loss or sample contamination. The developed method was successfully applied to the analysis of PAH standard solutions loaded on sorbent tubes packed with quartz wool and the graphitized carbon black sorbent Carbograph2. The optimized method showed high desorption efficiency over the whole range of target PAHs with good precision, linearity and sensitivity. The proposed method was verified on an urban dust Standard Reference Material (SRM 1649a); the experimentally determined concentrations agreed with the certified ranges (95% confidence limit) for all target compounds except benzo[a]anthracene, which fell just outside the narrow certified range. The desorption efficiency and the reproducibility of the method was evaluated by analysing pieces of real sample filters sampled from urban air for a period of 24h. The results confirmed the homogeneity of the filter and showed high recovery efficiencies for all target PAHs.

The problem of air pollution is a frequently recurring situation and its management has social and economic considerable effects. Given the interaction of the numerous factors involved in the raising of the atmospheric pollution rates, it should be considered that the relation between the intensity of emission produced by the polluting source and the resulting pollution is not immediate. The aim of this study was to realise and to compare two support decision system (neural networks and multivariate regression model) that, correlating the air quality data with the meteorological information, are able to predict the critical pollution events. The development of a back-propagation neural network is presented to predict the daily PM10 concentration 1, 2 and 3 days early. The measurements obtained by the territorial monitoring stations are one of the primary data sources; the forecasting of the major weather parameters available on the website and the forecasting of the Saharan dust obtained by the “Centro Nacional de Supercomputaciòn” website, satellite images and back trajectories analysis are used for the weather input data. The results obtained with the neural network were compared with those obtained by a multivariate linear regression model for 1 and 2 days forecasting. The relative root mean square error for both methods shows that the artificial neural networks (ANN) gives more accurate results than the multivariate linear regression model mostly for 1 day forecasting; moreover, the regression model used, in spite of ANN, failed when it had to fit spiked high values of PM10 concentration.

Some peak PM10 episodes, occurred during PM monitoring campaigns performed on October 2005 and February and June 2006 in Bari town, have been characterized. Moreover back trajectories of air masses and Principal Component Analyses were applied. Three of the peak PM10 episodes investigated were related to local emissions of primary pollutants during poor atmospheric dispersion conditions. The other two peak PM10 episodes considered are related with long range transport air masses toward Apulia region: in one case the chemical characterization and the back trajectories analysis indicate that high PM10 value detected is due to the Saharan dust advection in the Apulia region; in the other case air masses with different origin give rise to high PM10 value.Moreover PM10 daily mean concentrations, presented in this paper collected from January 2005 to August 2007 and obtained by automatic device in six stations of air quality monitoring networks in Bari territory. do not show a seasonal trend for PM10 concentrations, contrary to the PM10 trend shown in the towns of North Italy. This can be explained mostly considering that our region presents generally meteo-climatic conditions that favour pollutants dispersion. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Volatile organic compounds (VOC) have been monitored in 12 sites of Canosa di Puglia, a city located in the Southern of Italy, in order to identify the main VOC source—vehicular traffic or industrial—and to evaluate the critical situations in the city. Monitoring, carried out by using Radiello® diffusive samplers, has been planned taking into account the traffic density and the architecture of the city. From the study of the data it has been emerged that, among all considered VOC, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX) are the pollutants at higher concentration. However no critical situation has appared from the present monitoring. Maps of daily benzene and toluene concentrations have shown that the most significant pollution phenomena happens in the center of the urban area which is in a valley with narrow roads and high buildings that do not allow an efficient dispersion of pollutants. The study of the diagnostic ratios between the toluene and benzene concentrations in the several areas (average T/B = 3.4) and the high Pearson’s coefficient among the pollutants, and in particular between benzene and toluene concentrations (r = 0.9505), have suggested that in urban area these pollutants are emitted from the same source: the vehicular traffic.

The human activities in their various aspects cause a change in the natural air quality. This change results more marked in very populated and in high industrialized areas. Some pollutants emitted are typical of a particular activity. Each source of pollution is identified by its profile in the composition of the emissions in the environment. Multivariate receptor models can be used in order to apportion pollutants to the different sources assessing the contribution of each source to the total pollution.This paper deals with the application of Absolute Principal Component Scores (APCS) receptor model to data obtained from the automatic network of air quality monitoring in the city of Bari (South Italy). The parameters monitored by automatic networks, as bihourly values, are PM10, NO, CO, Benzene, Toluene, Xilene. The data shown in this paper concerning I month almost of sampling in different monitoring stations of Bari Municipality during the period of time from January 2005 to April 2006. Moreover preliminary results obtained applying the APCS model to daily PM2.5 samples collected during SITECOS PRIN project are shown. The results concerning data collected in corso Cavour (Bari) during the month of October 2005.The results obtained by APCS receptor model seem to suggest a poor contribution of the "vehicular traffic source" and a relevant contribution of the "secondary particulate source" to particulate matter concentrations. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Mean volatile organic compound (VOC) concentrations in 16 newspaper stands and in two printing shops were monitored for the purpose of quantifying the various VOCs in these areas and to relate the results. In each site halogenated, oxygenated, aliphatic, and aromatic compounds were monitored during one workweek. They were sampled with diffusive samplers for thermal desorption and analysed by GC-MS. The results showed that in all newspaper stands the indoor levels of toluene were much higher than the outdoor levels; some sites had toluene indoor concentrations 100 times higher than their correspondent outdoor levels. The investigations in two printing shops confirmed that newspapers, in particular the inks, are the main sources of toluene in the newspaper stands.

In order to assess the impact of industrial emissions on Taranto air quality, PM2,5 monitoring campaigns have been performed in the risk area of Taranto (via Orsini and via Dante sampling sites), during the months of October 2005 and February 2006. On the samples collected chemical characterization has been performed (ions, aromatic polycyclic hydrocarbons and carbon fraction). Even though via Orsini sampling site, located close to the industrial area, does not show PM2,5 concentration values different in comparison with the other sampling site, it shows higher concentrations of PAHs. Moreover during some days with specific weather conditions, it is possible to note high concentration values of micro-pollutants in the samples collected in via Dante sampling site, located in the downtown of Taranto city.Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Absolute Principal Component Scores (APCS) have been performed on the data obtained. Statistical analysis of PM components has highlighted an important contribution of industrial facilities on the air quality in Taranto city.