Analyzing SO2 concentrations and wind directions during a short monitoring campaign at a site far from the industrial pole of La Plata, Argentina.

This article presents and discusses SO2 air quality concentrations (ppbv) together with wind velocities and directions measurements carried out between September 1st and December 21st 2005 at a site located 8.5 km away from the Industrial Pole of La Plata area. As the city and its surroundings have no official monitoring network, the current work enlarges the air quality information available from the zone and sets some initial considerations to the future siting of monitoring stations. The statistical analysis of the data was performed using techniques of tests for outliers and trends, dissimilarity measures and robust regression. In relation to SO2 concentrations, low values were found during this short campaign considering daily averages (with a maximum of 8.5 ppbv) and hourly averages (with a maximum of 25.9 ppbv); World Health Organization guidelines were never surpassed. Nevertheless, a strong dependence between wind directions carrying air pollutants from the Industrial Pole and hourly concentration peaks were found. Due to low monthly SO2 concentrations and because a decreasing time trend was found, the authors propose, as an example, the implementation of an alternative discontinuous method to the continuous analyzer used in the current campaign. Our results state that sampling every 7 days at 13:00-13:59 hours (local time) would be enough to get representative values of the air quality. As a general remark it is possible to highlight that longer and systematic studies should be encouraged to confirm the seasonal wind pattern and to evaluate the air quality.

Study of meteorological aspects and urban concentration of SO2 in atmospheric environment of La Plata, Argentina.

This article presents and discusses SO(2) (ppbv) concentration measurements combined with meteorological data (mainly wind speed and direction) for a five-year campaign (1996 to 2000), in a site near an oil refinery plant close to the city of La Plata and surroundings (aprox. 740.000 inh.), considered one of the six most affected cities by air pollution in the country. Since there is no monitoring network in the area, the obtained results should be considered as medium term accumulated data that enables to determine trends by analyzing together gas concentrations and meteorological parameters. Preliminary characterization of the behaviour of the predominant winds of the region in relation with potential atmospheric gas pollutants from seasonal wind roses is possible to carry out from the data. These results are complemented with monthly averaged SO(2) measurements. In particular, for year 2000, pollutant roses were determined which enable predictions about contamination emission sources. As a general result we can state that there is a clear increase in annual SO(2) concentration and that the selected site should be considered as a key site for future survey monitoring network deployment. Annual SO(2) average concentration and prevailing seasonal winds determined in this work, together with the potential health impact of SO(2) reveals the need for a comprehensive and systematic study involving particulate matter an other basic pollutant gases.