Aerosol Pollution from Small Combustors in a Village

Urban air pollution is widely recognized. Recently, there have been a few projects that examined air quality in rural areas (e.g., AUPHEP project in Austria, WOODUSE project in Denmark). Here we present the results within the International Cooperation Project RER/2/005 targeted at studying the effect of local combustion processes to air quality in the village of Brzezina in the countryside north-west of Wroclaw (south western Poland). We identified the potential emission sources and quantified their contributions. The ambient aerosol monitoring (PM(10) and elemental concentrations) was performed during 4 measurement cycles, in summer 2009, 2010 and in winter 2010, 2011. Some receptor modeling techniques, factor analysis-multiple linear regression analysis (FA-MLRA) and potential source localization function (PSLF), have been used. Different types of fuel burning along with domestic refuse resulted in an increased concentration of PM(10) particle mass, but also by an increased in various other compounds (As, Pb, Zn). Local combustion sources contributed up to 80% to PM(10) mass in winter. The effect of other sources was small, from 6 to 20%, dependently on the season. Both PM(10) and elemental concentrations in the rural settlement were comparable to concentrations at urban sites in summer and were much higher in winter, which can pose asignificant health risk to its inhabitants.