| Measuring exposure to coarse, fine and ultrafine dust and their association with metals in the air is important for health and ecosystem risk assessments. The goal of this study was to investigate the concentration, particle size distribution and spatial dispersion of metals in total and fractioned airborne dust. Samples of airborne dust were collected at five different sites over a one year period in the Sudbury area, including one control site located downwind of the south-westerly most industrial emission source. X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) was used to determine the total concentration of As, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb and Zn in airborne dust. Results from this analysis suggest that the more centrally located sites, within the city of Greater Sudbury, contained the most metals compared to the other sites and that most metals were more concentrated in the respirable size fraction, PM2.5. Also, X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) was used to determine the S K-edge speciation in the PM10+, PM10-PM2.5, and PM2.5 size fractions, for three sites at the end and midpoint of the transect. XANES revealed that atmospheric S is mostly in the form of sulphate. |
