Source apportionment of persistent organic pollutants in Aliaga industrial region

Ambient air samples of aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were collected during four seasons (winter, spring, summer, and fall) at forty different sites in Aliaga that is one of major industrial areas in Izmir, Turkey including several pollutant sources such as a large petroleum refinery and a petrochemical complex, scrap processing iron?steel plants with electric arc furnaces (EAFs), scrap storage and classification sites, steel rolling mills, a natural gas?fired power plant, a very dense transportation activity of ferrous scrap trucks, heavy road and rail traffic, a ship dismantling area, and busy ports with scrap iron dockyards. Spatial and seasonal variations of PAHs and PCBs were determined by passive sampling in 2009 and 2010. Source apportionments of PAHs and PCBs in the region were determined using Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) method. Three different factors were identified for both PAHs and PCBs. While sources of PAHs were determined as residential heating and coal usage, iron-steel production, and vehicular exhaust emissions, PCBs sources were determined as iron-steel production (consisting of steel-making and ship dismantling) emissions, residential combustion (coal and wood), and a mixed source (technical PCB mixtures + combustion). Keywords: Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF), source apportionment, Aliaga.