ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Environmental Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Residential Agglomerations II. Main, Minor, and Trace Elements in the Gravitation Dust Sediments

K. Flórián, M. Matherny, H. Nickel, N. Pliešovská, and K. Uhrinová

Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Metallurgy, Technical University Košice, SK-042 00 Košice

E-mail: mikulas.matherny@tuke.sk

Received: 21 February 2002

Abstract: It is necessary to observe the dustiness of residential agglomerations with respect to the chemical character of the gravitation dust sediments (precipitates), which secondarily influence also the chemical character of the airborne dust. The chemical character of the general dustiness was studied on the samples from four localities of the residential agglomeration of Košice on the N-S axis. This axis is recently the most frequent direction of prevailing winds (ca. 94 %) of the Košice basin. The influence of the geography of Košice basin on the total dustiness and also the chemical composition of the gravitation dust sediments were thus also observed. The Košice basin has a funnel-shaped character opening in the south direction. The elements of sediments were analyzed by atomic spectrochemical methods. The results of the monthly-collected samples were evaluated in differential histograms. With the selection and analysis of the chosen typical elements of the gravitation dust sediments, namely the main element Fe, the minor element Ti, and the cluster of trace elements As, Pb, Cu, Yn, Sr, Rb, and Zr, characteristic input data matrixes were acquired. These describe the situation not only in the Košice basin in Slovakia, but also in four typically different residential agglomerations in the GFR. The evaluation of the results of sampling of the sedimentary particles and the chemical determinations of the given elements enable to evaluate the element variability and the level of the toxicity of the studied residential agglomerations.

Full paper in Portable Document Format: 575a374.pdf

Chemical Papers 57 (5) 374–381 (2003)