Atmospheric depositions of persistent pollutants: methodological aspects and values from case studies

Abstract

Deposition monitoring, already in use by government control organizations of various countries, contributes to an important increase in experimental knowledge on pollutant deposition fluxes, on their environmental fate and on the possible effects on human health. At the European level, the necessity to consider with extreme attention the environmental contamination due to deposition, has brought to adopt a series of legislative measures and recommendations; this has contributed to set up environmental surveillance systems and monitoring campaigns for a series of pollutants which may accumulate in the environment as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and for metals. More recently, with DL.vo 155/2010, the necessity to consider, in the development of monitoring stations, the possibility to detect also data on deposition rates which represent a non-direct exposure of the population through the food chain. For sampling the Decree considers only two types of depositions: for total deposition (bulk and Bergerhoff) and wet only deposition.