Air Quality Evaluation with Passive Samplers for Large Cities

Passive Sampler를 이용한 대도시의 대기질 평가

Filter badge type sampler has not been widely used to evaluate air quality over large cities in Korea while it can be successfully used for multi-point sampling and analysis. We evaluated the passive sampler as a new tool to monitor air quality over large cities. We latticed Metropolitan Seoul into $2{\times}2Km$ to give 136 points. $NO_2$ concentrations were measured at all the points in the Spring and Summer of 1997. According to the passive sampler data, natural green zones generally recorded lower $NO_2$ concentrations than major streets and traffic congestion areas. Passive samplers with abundant 136 points gave more detailed picture of $NO_2$ distribution while auto-monitoring network did not clearly provide the characteristics of local land use. Also, passive samplers gave 15% higher values than auto-monitoring network. The correlation between the two values appears very high judging from the regression slope of 0.92 and correlation coefficient of 0.91. This study clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of the passive sampler as a tool to monitor air quality over large cities.