Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 401 Park Drive, Room 429-A, Landmark Center, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.
Environ Monit Assess. 2019 Nov 1;191(12):711. doi: 10.1007/s10661-019-7857-6.
Fine particulate matter (PM) air pollution varies spatially and temporally in concentration and composition and has been shown to cause or exacerbate adverse effects on human and ecological health. Biomonitoring using airborne tree leaf deposition as a proxy for particulate matter (PM) pollution has been explored using a variety of study designs, tree species, sampling strategies, and analytical methods. In the USA, relatively few have applied these methods using co-located fine particulate measurements for comparison and relying on one tree species with extensive spatial coverage, to capture spatial variation in ambient air pollution across an urban area. Here, we evaluate the utility of this approach, using a spatial saturation design and pairing tree leaf samples with filter-based PM across Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the goal of distinguishing mobile and stationary sources using PM composition. Co-located filter and leaf-based measurements revealed some significant associations with traffic and roadway proximity indicators. We compared filter and leaf samples with differing protection from the elements (e.g., meteorology) and PM collection time, which may account for some variance in PM source and/or particle size capture between samples. To our knowledge, this study is among the first to use deciduous tree leaves from a single tree species as biomonitors for urban PM pollution in the northeastern USA.
细颗粒物（PM）空气污染在浓度和成分上具有空间和时间上的变化，并已被证明会对人类和生态健康造成或加剧不利影响。使用空气传播的树叶沉积作为颗粒物（PM）污染的替代物进行生物监测已经使用了各种研究设计、树种、采样策略和分析方法进行了探索。在美国，相对较少的人使用这些方法，这些方法使用了与比较用的细颗粒物的共置测量值，并依赖于一种具有广泛空间覆盖范围的树种，以捕捉城市地区环境空气中的空间变化。在这里，我们使用空间饱和设计和匹配合肥宾夕法尼亚州匹兹堡的基于过滤器的 PM 的树叶样本，评估了这种方法的实用性，目的是使用 PM 成分来区分移动和固定污染源。共置的过滤器和基于树叶的测量值与交通和道路接近度指标有一些显著的关联。我们比较了具有不同元素保护（例如气象）和 PM 收集时间的过滤器和树叶样本，这可能解释了样本之间 PM 源和/或颗粒尺寸捕获的一些差异。据我们所知，这项研究是美国东北部首次使用单一树种的落叶树树叶作为城市 PM 污染的生物监测器的研究之一。
