Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
6330986 Science of The Total Environment 2014 10 Pages PDF
Abstract
The measured wet deposition and air concentration of heavy metals were significantly underestimated by the model for all metals (except vanadium) by factors between 2 and 10. These results suggest major missing sources of annual heavy metal emissions which are currently not included in the official inventory. Primary emissions were able to account for only 9%, 21%, 29%, 21%, 36%, 7% and 23% of the measured concentrations for As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn. A likely additional contribution to atmospheric heavy metal concentrations is the wind driven re-suspension of surface dust still present in the environment from the legacy of much higher historic emissions. Inclusion of two independent estimates of emissions from re-suspension in the model was found to give an improved agreement with measurements. However, an accurate estimate of the magnitude of re-suspended emissions is restricted by the lack of measurements of metal concentrations in the re-suspended surface dust layer.
Related Topics
Life Sciences Environmental Science Environmental Chemistry
Authors
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