Atmospheric Environment 38 (2004) 321–331 Metals in airborne particulate matter in the industrial district of Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, in an annual period Simone Lorena Quiterio a ,C! elia Regina Sousa da Silva a , Graciela Arbilla a, *, Viviane Escaleira b a Departamento de F! ısico Qu ! ımica, Instituto de Qu ! ımica, Universit ! aria Federal do Rio de Janeiro, CT, Bloco A, Sala 408, Cidade Universit ! aria, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 21949-900, Brazil b Centro Nacional de Pesquisa de Solos, EMBRAPA Solos, Rua Jardim Bot # anico, 1024, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22460-000, Brazil Received 31 March 2003; accepted 4 September 2003 Abstract Themaingoalofthisworkistoassesstheconcentrationsoftotalsuspendedparticles(TSP)andairborneparticulate trace metals in the Industrial District of Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the main pollution sources are the local industries. The sampling was performed using a high-volume pump. The TSP levels were determined by gravimetry and the metals by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission. A geometrical mean of 87740 mgm 3 was determined for TSP fortheperiodMarch2001–February2002,whichishigherthanboththeBrazilianprimaryandsecondarystandardsof air quality. Metals concentrations were compared with literature values for other regions of the world and with air qualitystandardsofregulatoryagencies.Mn,Fe,Zn,Cu,CrandAllevelsarehigherthanthereportedvaluesforother industrial and urban areas around the world. Mn, Cr and Ni concentrations are higher than the US-EPA standards. Clusterandprincipalcomponentanalysiswereusedtogetsomeinsightaboutthesourcesofmetalsandthecorrelations among them. r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Airborne particulate matter; Trace metals; Industrial sources; Principal component analysis 1. Introduction Airborne particulate trace metals are considered to represent a health hazard since they can be absorbed into human lung tissues during breathing. Frequently, anthropogenic emissions cause the levels of metals in suspendedparticlestobewellabovenaturalbackground levels (Pitts and Finlayson-Pitts, 2000). Geological material, such as construction, road and soil dusts, are predominantly in the coarse particle size range and typically constitutes about 50% of PM 10 . Suspended dust consists mainly of oxides of aluminium, silicon, calcium, titanium, iron and other metal oxides, depending on the geological area and the industrial processes developed in the region (Chow and Watson, 1992). Sweet et al. (1993) collected and analysed samples of inhalable particulate matter (PM 10 ) in southeast Chicago and East St. Louis. They found a considerable variation between urban areas in the concentrations of some toxic elements that appear unrelated to total PM 10 mass. Some studies show that total suspended particles (TSP) and metal concentrations follow a similar pattern (Bilos et al., 2001; Ragostaetal.,2002). Beceiro-Gonz ! alezetal.(1997) found that, for the same area, TSP and PM 10 metal distribution patterns were different. Fe and Mn were related to coarse particles while Cd and Zn were associated to PM 10 . Thus, both TSP and inhalable ARTICLE IN PRESS AE International – Central & South America *Corresponding author. Tel.: +55-21-2562-7755; fax: +55- 21-2562-7265. E-mail address: graciela@iq.ufrj.br (G. Arbilla). 1352-2310/$-see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2003.09.017