Inorganic and organic pollutants in the snow cover of the northern city

ABSTRACT

Snow cover is a good indicator of air pollution and accumulates trace elements and organic pollutants. At the same time, the analysis of snow cover is simple and allows you to assess the presence of these pollutants in the atmosphere. We have studied the snow cover of an urban agglomeration located in the northern part of Europe, with a large number of inhabitants, and therefore with a large anthropogenic load on the atmosphere. We have identified trace elements in the snow cover at many city crossroads. Also we determined the presence of PAHs as the main organic pollutants that are typical for urban agglomerations. Inorganic pollutants were detected in all samples. We found that trace elements contamination advised 1 to 5 according to Nemerow index (Pi_Nemerow). In 50% of the samples, the contamination index corresponded to type V (heavy pollution); 30% to type III and 20% to type IV, respectively. We also determined PAHs in the same places. We can conclude that the values of the investigated substances are low throughout the city. About half of PAHs come from the combustion of wood, the other from the combustion of petroleum products. Since different sources prevail at different sampling points, therefore, it can be assumed about anthropogenic sources, which is also confirmed by the HMW/LMW ratio. No correlations we were found between heavy PAH and Trace elements, no associations were found.

KEYWORDS:

• Pollution
• snow
• trace elements
• polyaromatic hydrocarbons

Acknowledgments

This research was performed using instrumentation at the Core Facility Center “Arktika” of Еру Northern (Arctic) Federal University and was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (state assignment project No 0793-2020-0007).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Funding

This work was supported by the Федеральная целевая программа [state assignment project No 0793-2020-0007].