Air Pollution Monitoring: A Case Study from Romania

The first section of this chapter provides an up-to-date general view of air pollution/air quality topic. It indicates main pollutants and their sources and impacts and presents and discusses current air quality standards and air quality indexes worldwide; how datasets are acquired, gathered and analyzed and how the measurements are then interpreted are also presented. Recent works containing updated and detailed technical discussions for each issue addressed and additional web resources are mentioned. The great importance of air pollution monitoring is emphasized. Second, in the international context of incomplete information on air pollution in East Europe, the chapter includes a section presenting an assessment of air pollution at some sites in Romania together with its evolution from the beginning of the monitoring up to present. Availability of PM10, PM2.5, NOx, SO2 and CO concentrations is site and pollutant dependent and varies from 3 to 9 years. Investigation of temporal and spatial variation of pollutant levels, as well as of PM10 and PM2.5 relationships with the measured gaseous air pollutants and with meteorological variables, includes correlation and linear regression analysis and temporal-trend analysis; coefficient of divergence was calculated to check up on the air pollution inter-sites' differences and pollutant seasonal variation intra-site.