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Description
Nowadays, air-pollution-derived fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is fully acknowledged to be a major public health problem. PM2.5 generally corresponds to a very complex and heterogeneous mixture of both inorganic (e.g. metals, ions) and organic (e.g. polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: PAH) chemicals, and biological components (e.g. pollen, fungi). Beirut city is characterized by high transport density and high electricity production by diesel-powered private generators, resulting in high levels of air pollution. These two factors favor in particular the emission of fine particles, which increases the environmental toxicological risks associated with particulate pollution. This study aims to determine the chemical characteristics of PM2.5, collected in in the southern suburb of Beirut city.
The sampling of PM2.5 was done twice a week for 24 hours, collected on Teflon filters. Beside the gravimetric measurements, the consequent samples were analyzed by proton induced X-ray emission technique PIXE at the Lebanese 1.7 MV Tandem-Pelletron accelerator of Beirut. The temporal variation of the mass of PM2.5 as well as their elemental concentration is shown to be dependent on the pollution sources and weather conditions. On the other hand, the organic chemical characterization of PM2.5 has revealed the presence of wide chemicals notably PAH. The influence of anthropogenic sources was confirmed by the chemical characterization.
