Analysis of Air Quality Index Distribution of PM10 and PM2.5 Concentrations in Ambient Air of Al-Hillah City, Iraq

Abstract

Air pollution is the most hazardous form of pollution because simply the amount of air is very limited on this planet and human beings cannot survive for more than a few minutes without air. In this work, air pollution with suspended solids will be investigated, where the concentrations of both PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 in Al-Hillah City have been measured by establishing three monitoring stations in a major street. The street has two main hospitals, a stadium, and many organizations. Temp monitor (model: Airing-1000) was utilized for this purpose. During the study period (five months), the range of PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 concentrations were from 7.8 to 32.5 μg/m³ and 4.5 to 11.1 μg/m³, respectively. The average PM₁₀ concentration from station H2 exceeds the annual standard of WHO while the PM_2.5 averages were within the annual standard of WHO except reading from site H2 during May 2019 was higher than the WHO limit. Many factors assist to raise the PMs concentrations in urban areas such as vehicle emission, measurement season type as well as dust events. In this study, we have noticed all factors are playing a significant role in increasing PMs concentrations.