Study of air pollution in the proximity of a waste incinerator

Montale is a small town in Tuscany characterised by high PM10 levels. Close to the town there is a waste incinerator plant. There are many concerns in the population and in the press about the causes of the high levels of pollution in this area. Daily PM10 samples were collected for 1 year by the FAI Hydra Dual sampler and analysed by different techniques in order to obtain a complete chemical speciation (elements by PIXE and ICP-MS, ions by Ion Chromatography, elemental and organic carbon by a thermo-optical instrument); hourly fine (<2.5 μm) and coarse (2.5–10 μm) PM samples were collected for shorter periods by the Streaker sampler and hourly elemental concentrations were obtained by PIXE analysis. Positive Matrix Factorization identified and quantified the major aerosol sources. Biomass burning turned out to be the most important source with an average percentage contribution to PM10 of 27% of and even higher percentages during the winter period when there are the highest PM10 concentrations. The contribution of the incinerator source has been estimated as about 6% of PM10.