engleski

AIR QUALITY IN CROATIA MONITORING AND CATEGORIZATION AT REGIONAL SCALE

Monitoring of air quality in urban and industrial areas in Croatia has started in Zagreb during the 60s and it was organised by the Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health and regional authority. Since the early seventies air pollution monitoring has been gradually introduced in other Croatian towns by regional Institutes of Public Health together with the regional authorities. All regional monitoring networks use the same methodology for air quality monitoring and are connected in one common network. Today this is the only monitoring network which exists in Croatia. This network has plenty of manually operated stations and only a few automatic stations. Reorganization and harmonization of the regional network is expected in the future. Automatic equipment will be gradually introduced to replace the manually operated one. The first automatic monitoring station in State monitoring network was established in Zagreb in 2003. In accordance with the Ordinance on locations of permanent air monitoring stations in the national network (Ordinance, 2002) 22 automatic stations for continuous monitoring of air pollution are expected to be installed in the State monitoring network till the end of 2007. The stations will be located in towns, industrial areas, national parks and islands.There are also some local monitoring stations in Croatia for monitoring specific air pollutants in industrial areas, gas fields and near waste dumps. Global indicators of air quality in Croatia are monitored by Meteorological and Hydrological Service. During 2002 the surveillance of air quality was provided in 39 Croatian towns. This paper describes an ongoing air quality surveillance in regional network with respect to the results of sulphur dioxide, smoke, total suspended particulate matter, metals lead, cadmium and manganese in total suspended particulate matter, PM10, nitrogen dioxide, ozone and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons measurements in seven the largest Croatian towns. The results refer to the entire monitoring period in each town where the surveillance was performed. Only SO2 and smoke were measured in all seven towns and air quality greatly improved over the years of measuring. Air in Croatian towns was moderately polluted with SPM, PM10, NO2 and BaP. Levels of lead, cadmium and manganese in SPM and ozone were very low during the whole surveillance period. Croatian towns follow trends similar to those of other European countries.

Limit values; metals; nitrogen dioxide; ozone; PAH; recommended values; smoke; sulphur dioxide; total suspended particulates

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