A new method for assessing the contribution of Primary Biological Atmospheric Particles to the mass concentration of the atmospheric aerosol |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada;2. Air Quality Research Division, Environment Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Canada;3. Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA;4. Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research, Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, MD 21046, USA;5. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA;6. Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of California, 50 University Hall MC7360, Berkeley, CA, USA;7. School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada;8. Population Studies Division, Health Canada, Ottawa, Canada;1. Institute of Surface-Earth System Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China;2. State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Urban Ecological Environment Simulation and Protection, South China Institute of Environmental Science, MEE, Guangzhou, 510655, China;1. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China;2. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO 63108, USA;3. Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA;4. Environmental Chemistry and Technology Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA;5. Water Science and Engineering Laboratory, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA;6. State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100094, China;7. Huairou Eco-Environmental Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 101408, China;8. CAS Center for Excellence in Regional Atmospheric Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China;1. Environmental Monitoring and Reporting Branch, Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, Toronto, Canada;2. Southern Ontario Centre for Atmospheric Aerosol Research, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada;3. Air Quality and Climate Change, Metro Vancouver, Burnaby, Canada;4. Meteorological Service of Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Vancouver, Canada |
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| Abstract: | Primary Biologic Atmospheric Particles (PBAPs) constitute an interesting and poorly investigated component of the atmospheric aerosol. We have developed and validated a method for evaluating the contribution of overall PBAPs to the mass concentration of atmospheric particulate matter (PM). The method is based on PM sampling on polycarbonate filters, staining of the collected particles with propidium iodide, observation at epifluorescence microscope and calculation of the bioaerosol mass using a digital image analysis software. The method has been also adapted to the observation and quantification of size-segregated aerosol samples collected by multi-stage impactors.Each step of the procedure has been individually validated. The relative repeatability of the method, calculated on 10 pairs of atmospheric PM samples collected side-by-side, was 16%.The method has been applied to real atmospheric samples collected in the vicinity of Rome, Italy. Size distribution measurements revealed that PBAPs was mainly in the coarse fraction of PM, with maxima in the range 5.6–10 μm. 24-h samples collected during different period of the year have shown that the concentration of bioaerosol was in the range 0.18–5.3 μg m? 3 (N = 20), with a contribution to the organic matter in PM10 in the range 0.5–31% and to the total mass concentration of PM10 in the range 0.3–18%.The possibility to determine the concentration of total PBAPs in PM opens up interesting perspectives in terms of studying the health effects of these components and of increasing our knowledge about the composition of the organic fraction of the atmospheric aerosol. |
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