Seasonal and site-specific variation in particulate matter pollution in Lithuania

Özet

The levels of particulate matter tend to exceed the limit values in many countries across the world.Epidemiological studies have found the associations between particulate matter pollution and humanhealth effects. Therefore, the accurate assessment of particulate matter pollution in urban areas is essentialfor evaluating the risk to human health. Particulate matter concentration varies between different seasonsand it is important to understand the differences in pollution sources in each season and their contributionsto the total particulate matter pollution in the city or in the different areas of the city. Better understandingof these variations of particulate matter would lead to an improvement of the assessment ofexposure to air pollution. In present study, particles less than 10 μm in aerodynamic diameter (PM10) wereseasonally modelled using the ADMS-Urban model and compared with a measurement campaign to estimateseasonal differences in site-specific concentrations of PM10 in Kaunas city, Lithuania. The statisticalevaluation of model performance was calculated for seasonal and annual concentrations of PM10 for 20measurement sites. The results of the study showed that ADMS-Urban model performed well in predictingPM10 concentrations, with annual mean measured and modelled concentrations of 30.3 and 25.7 μg/m3,respectively. The RMSE was 5.0 μg/m3, the index of agreement was 0.72, the correlation coefficient was0.87, and the relative percentile error 15%. The results of the site-specific analysis of PM10 indicated thatADMS-Urban model considers different characteristics of sites relatively well and can be applied for exposureestimates in cohort studies.