Abstract
Airborne particulate samples collected at various residential areas in Japan weresubjected to multielement analyses by instrumental neutron activation and energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence. The 110 analytical data thus obtained, each consisting of measured atmospheric concentrations of various elements, were examined and compared to one another from the view point of characterizing the elemental air pollution. It was attempted to find out reasonable measures which make it possible to grasp simply and clearly the features of elemental air pollution. The following are presented in this article.
(1) Measured elemental concentrations show a log-normal distribution.
(2) The geometric mean concentration appears to be more suited for expressing the average concentration than the arithmetic mean concentration.
(3) The ratio of measured concentration to geometric mean concentration, which we call “relative concentration”, is considered to be a simple and convenient measure for grasping the features of elemental air pollution.
(4) The degree of areal variation in atmospheric concentration can be more reasonably expressed by the geometric standard deviation than by the variation coefficient.
