CHARACTERIZATION OF INDOOR AND OUTDOOR AIR QUALITY RELATIONSHIPS IN CHENNAI, TAMILNAU, INDIA.
Abstract
The important finding of the present study is that a major portion of SPM concentration is in the form of finer particulate matters (< 0.7μm). Similar is the trend of the variation of the heavy metal concentrations with size of the particles, i.e. Most of the metal mass is concentrated in the fine particle size interval (i.e. < 0. 7 μm). The size distribution of both SPM and metals is found to be highly skewed towards the larger pat1icles. The only assumptions are size distributions relating to Ca and Cu are the only expectations. While, Cu is more abundant in fine particulate mode (< 0.7 μm), its presence is also important in size intervals 5.4- 1.6 and 1.6- 0.7 is also significant. However, in case of Ca there is no definite pattern in its distribution with size of particles. The seasonally averaged PM10 concentration is approximately 86.40% of TSP, and is 90.18%, 81.41% and 86.40% of TSP for winter, summer and monsoon seasons respectively. There is an unmistakable connection among PM10 and fine particles, and between PM10 and PM2.5. This suggests the variety in PM10 can be represented by the variance in PM2.5. Likewise, a consistent relationship between fine fraction and PM2.5 also indicates that the difference in the in fine fraction concentration is due in essence to the variance in PM2.5. Thus, present study reveals that PM10 can adequately act as surrogate for both fine fractions as well as PM2.5. The fine fraction can also act as surrogate for PM2.5.
