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Air pollution assessment using a cost-effective device: the case study of the northern Latium coastal area.
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Researchers used a cost-effective sensor network to monitor air pollution in a coastal area of northern Lazio, Italy, finding elevated particulate matter concentrations linked to traffic and industrial sources. While focused on air quality rather than microplastics, airborne particulate monitoring is increasingly important for tracking atmospheric microplastic exposure in urban and coastal areas.
The increase in urbanization requires intense energy consumption and causes an increase in emissions from transportation and industrial sources. As a result, a variety of pollutants are released into the atmosphere with negative effects on the health of organisms and ecosystems as well as on human health. In this perspective, coastal areas are considered "hotspots" of environmental contamination since they often host multiple human activities. This issue is particularly dramatic close to important maritime hubs, as a matter of fact overall 25% of the world energy consumption (a major source of pollution) is employed for transport, and over 80% of world trade is carried by sea (Gobbi et al. 2020). During 2019-2020 we carried out a continuous monitoring of particulate matter in a fixed station to understand the sources of air pollution in the northern Latium coastal area. This area has been selected for the presence of industrial activities located in a few kilometers of coast (Piazzolla et al. 2020). The amount and typology of solid particles present in the environment have been assessed by implementing a reliable cost-effective device (Gozzi et al. 2015, 2017) which integrates an optical particle counter and a filtering set-up able to collect particulate matter with dimension > 400 nm (Della Ventura et al. 2017). Filters were periodically removed from the device and recovered microparticles were subjected to microscopic (optical and electron), spectroscopic (IR, Raman), and microchemical (SEM-EDS) characterization. Results were related to the wind speed and direction measured by the Civitavecchia Coastal Environment Monitoring System (Bonamano et al. 2015), allowing an evaluation of the contribution of anthropic (industrial and maritime) activities to the pollution in this area.Bonamano S., Piermattei V., Madonia A., Mendoza F., Pierattini A., Martellucci R., ... & Marcelli M. (2016). The Civitavecchia Coastal Environment Monitoring System (C-CEMS): a new tool to analyze the conflicts between coastal pressures and sensitivity areas. Ocean Science, 12(1). DOI 10.5194/os-12-87-2016Della Ventura G., Gozzi F., Marcelli A. (2017) The MIAMI project: design and testing of an IoT lowcost device for mobile monitoring of PM and gaseous pollutants. Superstripe Press, Science Series, 12, 41-44, ISBN 9788866830764Gobbi G.P., Di Liberto L., Barnaba F. (2020). Impact of port emissions on Eu-regulated and non-regulated air quality indicators: the case of Civitavecchia (Italy). Science of the Total environment, 719. DOI 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134984 Gozzi, F., Della Ventura, G., Marcelli, A. (2015) Mobile monitoring of particulate matter: State of art and perspectives. Atmospheric Pollution Research, 7, 228-234. DOI 10.1016/j.apr.2015.09.007.Gozzi F., Della Ventura G., Marcelli A., Lucci F. (2017) Current status of particulate matter pollution in Europe and future perspectives: a review. Journal of Materials and Environmental Science, 8, 1901-1909. ISSN 2028-2508Piazzolla D., Cafaro V., de Lucia G. A., Mancini E., Scanu S., Bonamano S., ... & Marcelli M. (2020). Microlitter pollution in coastal sediments of the northern Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy: microplastics and fly-ash occurrence and distribution. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 106819. DOI 10.1016/j.ecss.2020.106819
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