Seasonal concentrations and partitioning of PAHs in a suburban site of Bursa, Turkey

Effects of space heating on atmospheric concentrations and gas–particle partitioning of PAHs were investigated in a suburban site of Bursa, Turkey. The average concentrations of ∑15-PAHs in heating season samples were approximately 10 times higher than those of non-heating season samples. The plot of log Kp versus log PL0 for all the data set gave significantly different slopes. The slope for the heating season (−0.75) samples was steeper than the one for the non-heating season (−0.64) samples. It was also observed that partitioning of PAHs for the non-heating season samples showed different characteristics depending on air parcel trajectories. Generally steeper slopes were obtained for the air parcels traveled across the Black sea and arrived to the sampling site from northern sector. On the other hand, the variations in slopes according to air mass origin were insignificant for the heating season samples. Local contributions from space heating are the reason for this observation.