Air quality monitoring network design to control nitrogen dioxide and ozone, appliedin Malaga, Spain

摘要

Air monitoring networks are necessary to assess air quality in order to reduce pollution to levels whichminimize harmful effects on human health and the environment. This paper describes a method to design or optimize air quality monitoring networks for nitrogen dioxide and ozone and its application in Malaga, amedium large city located in Andalusia, southern Spain, with traffic being the main source of air pollution. The completion of this method revealed that the old assessment network in Malaga was badly designed andmade it possible to determine that one traffic-orientated and one background control station were necessary for NO2 assessment in Malaga, as well as two control stations for O3. First the number of stations necessary isobtained from historical data. Sampling campaigns with passive diffusion samplers at 74 sites were thencarried out to obtain information on the pollution distribution in Malaga. The average concentrations foundfor NO2 and O3 were 22.8 μg/m3 and 64.3 μg/m3 respectively. Maximum values of up to 42.2 μg/m3 NO2 werefound in Malaga city centre and O3 reached 91.5 μg/m3 downwind from the emission source. After spatialinterpolation of the obtained values with Geographical Information Systems, a selection of the best locationsfor the monitoring stations was made, in line with the macro- and microscale siting requirements of theEuropean Directive 2008/50/EC on ambient air quality and cleaner air for Europe.