Abstract

Nowadays air over major cities has become over burdened with gases produced by automobiles throughout the world. The present study was conducted to investigate and monitor the ambient air quality. The results indicated the following mean concentrations (μg/m³): PM2.5 (138.25, 214.5, 234.5), NO2 (218, 170.4, 230.9), SO₂ (196.5, 184.3, 189), CO (108.5, 82.04, 81.7) and O₃ (680.2, 525.38, 590.5) for residential, industrial and vehicular sites in the respective order. Most of the pollutants were found to increase in winter except SO₂ and CO which showed high concentrations in spring and autumn respectively. The results suggested that there was strong positive bivariate correlation being observed between each pair of pollutants (PM2.5, NO2, SO₂, CO and O₃ with p<0.01 or p<0.05). Pearson Correlation is applied to evaluate the correlation between different pollutants. The results depicts that increased concentration levels of pollutants (PM_2.5, NO₂) being observed at vehicular site on the other hand elevated concentration level of pollutants (SO, CO, O₃) was seen at residential site.

Keywords: Air quality; Ambient air pollution; Particulate matter; Oxides of nitrogen and sulphur; Carbon monoxide; Ozone; Air pollution calculation