Ahmed-Fawzi DERRADJI’s research while affiliated with Constantine 1 University and other places

Very few previous investigations of respirable PM have been undertaken in the city of Constantine, Algeria. In general, air quality in Algeria and other Maghreb countries has not been extensively studied because of the insufficient number of researchers involved in this field and the unreliability of the few air quality monitoring networks installed in Algeria. It is therefore of utmost importance to address this problem in order to estimate the concentration levels of PM10 and their origins. The purpose of this study was to identify the different sources of PM10 and some chemical elements (Pb, Cu, Zn, Fe, K, Ca, Na, Mg) at a traffic site at Zouaghi, in the south of Constantine, using different statistical methods: factor analysis (FA) to categorise the different trace elements according to their origin, and the enrichment factor (EF) to identify terrigenous elements and those having a marine origin. We also used back-trajectories clustering to identify potential distant sources that contribute to particulate pollution and metallic elements in our site.

Samples of particulate matter less than or equal to 10 μm (PM10) were collected every other day using an Airmetrics MiniVol portable air sampler in Constantine, the third largest and most densely populated city of Algeria with a population of 600,000. The main objective of this study was to assess the concentrations of particulate matter (PM) with an aerodynamic diameter ≤10 μm (PM10), and dust-laden trace metals in a residential area with heavy traffic during two months, from 25 March 2010 to 24 May 2010. Furthermore, the present work examines the daily levels of metallic elements Fe, Zn and Cu. The PM10 concentrations ranged from 7.6 to 159.4 μg/m3 during the study period. WHO’s daily PM10 average guide value of 50 μg/m3 was exceeded 10 times over 31 samples. HYSPLIT back trajectories were used to identify the source locations of the pollutants. Rain scavenging of atmospheric particulate matter led to a substantial decrease in PM10 concentrations. During the study period, Zn was detected in one sample at a concentration of 0.78 μg/m3. It is believed that air masses originating from Iceland’s Eyjafjöll volcano may have transported clouds of ashes rich in Zn to the sampling site on that occasion. A maximum of 2.92 μg/m3 of Cu was observed when the volcanic cloud reached the sampling site four times during the corresponding 24-h sampling period.