Seok Won Kang, Sumin Lee, Jiyou Kwoun, Tae Jung Lee, Young Min Jo This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Department of Applied Environmental Science, Kyung Hee University, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do 17104, Korea
Received:
September 28, 2022
Copyright The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are cited.
Revised:
November 25, 2022
Accepted:
January 3, 2023
Download Citation:
||https://doi.org/10.4209/aaqr.220335
Kang, S.W., Lee, S., Kwoun, J., Lee, T.J., Jo, Y.M. (2023). Analysis of Harmful Heavy Metals and Carbonaceous Components in Urban School PM2.5. Aerosol Air Qual. Res. 23, 220335. https://doi.org/10.4209/aaqr.220335
Cite this article:
Harmful heavy metals and carbonaceous substances contained in PM2.5 collected from 53 schools located in large Korean cities were closely analyzed based on the hypothesis that emission sources such as automobiles are coincident. The average concentration of PM2.5 from the analysis of all classrooms was 20.7 µg m–3. Mn was the most prevalent heavy metal with a concentration of 0.018 µg m–3, followed by Pb and Cu. The heavy metals were closely related to elemental carbon (EC) introduced mainly from the outside with a correlation coefficient of 0.556, showing consistent significance. Organic carbon (OC) showed a correlation coefficient of 0.357, which statistically supported the presence of obvious OC sources in the classroom. Overall school classroom contamination levels have been shown to be below national guideline.HIGHLIGHTS
ABSTRACT
Keywords:
PM2.5, Heavy metals, Indoor air quality, Carbonaceous elements
