A PM10 chemically characterized nation-wide dataset for Italy. Geographical influence on urban air pollution and source apportionment.

Urban textures of the Italian cities are peculiarly shaped by the local geography generating similarities among cities placed in different regions but comparable topographical districts. This suggested the following scientific question: can different topographies generate significant differences on the PM chemical composition at Italian urban sites that share similar geography despite being in different regions? To investigate whether such communalities can be found and are applicable at Country-scale, we propose here a novel methodological approach. A dataset comprising season-averages of PM mass concentration and chemical composition data was built, covering the decade 2005-2016 and referring to urban sites only (21 cities).

Outdoor spatial distribution and indoor levels of NO and SO in a high environmental risk site of the South Italy.

In the frame of the project EDOC@WORK3.0, Education and Work on Cloud, a monitoring plan has been carried out in the highly industrialized town of Taranto (one of the most polluted sites of Italy) in order to investigate contemporary indoor and outdoor concentrations of NO and SO by passive sampling devises (Radiello). Simultaneously indoor and outdoor samplings of NO and SO were performed from 2nd November 2015 to 2nd December 2015 in nine sites scattered in the investigated area at different quotes and distances from the industrial complex.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in a bakery indoor air: trends, dynamics, and dispersion.

Indoor air pollution assessment in work environments remains challenging due to a combination of logistic reasons and availability of costly instrumentation for data acquisition and post-processing. Existing literature focuses on energy production environments, hospitals, and less so on food production spaces. Studies on indoor air quality in bakeries are scarce or even absent.

Results of an interlaboratory comparison of analytical methods for quantification of anhydrosugars and biosugars in atmospheric aerosol.

An interlaboratory comparison was performed to evaluate the analytical methods for quantification of anhydrosugars - levoglucosan, mannosan, galactosan - and biosugars - arabitol, glucose and mannitol - in atmospheric aerosol. The performance of 10 laboratories in Italy currently involved in such analyses was investigated on twenty-six PM (particulate matter) ambient filters, three synthetic PM filters and three aqueous standard solutions. An acceptable interlaboratory variability was found, determined as the mean relative standard deviation (RSD%) of the results from the participating laboratories, with the mean RSD% values ranging from 25% to 46% and decreasing with increasing sugar concentration.

Tools based on multivariate statistical analysis for classification of soil and groundwater in Apulian agricultural sites.

In this paper, the results obtained from multivariate statistical techniques such as PCA (Principal component analysis) and LDA (Linear discriminant analysis) applied to a wide soil data set are presented. The results have been compared with those obtained on a groundwater data set, whose samples were collected together with soil ones, within the project "Improvement of the Regional Agro-meteorological Monitoring Network (2004-2007)". LDA, applied to soil data, has allowed to distinguish the geographical origin of the sample from either one of the two macroaeras: Bari and Foggia provinces vs Brindisi, Lecce e Taranto provinces, with a percentage of correct prediction in cross validation of 87%.