Seasonal variation of heavy metals in ambient air and precipitation at a single site in Washington, DC

Samuel Melaku, Vernon Morris, Dharmaraj Raghavan, Charles Hosten

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

101 Scopus citations

Abstract

Atmospheric samples of precipitation and ambient air were collected at a single site in Washington, DC, for 7 months (for ambient air samples) and 1 year (for wet deposition samples) and analyzed for arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead. The ranges of heavy metal concentrations for 6-day wet deposition samples collected over the 1-year period were 0.20-1.3 μg/l, 0.060-5.1 μg/l, 0.062-4.6 μg/l and 0.11-3.2 μg/l for arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead, respectively, with a precision better than 5% for more than 95% of the measurements. The ranges of heavy metal concentrations for the 6-day ambient air samples were 0.800-15.7 ng/m3, 1.50-30.0 ng/m3, 16.8-112 ng/m3, and 2.90-137 ng/m3 for arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead, respectively, with a precision better than 10%. The spread in the heavy metal concentration over the observation period suggests a high seasonal variability for heavy metal content in both ambient air and wet deposition samples.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)88-98
Number of pages11
JournalEnvironmental Pollution
Volume155
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2008
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Ambient air
  • Metals
  • Wet deposition

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Toxicology
  • Pollution
  • Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

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