A Comparative Study of the Physico-Chemical Characteristics
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Journal of Climatology & Weather Donyaei and Pourkhabbaz, J Climatol Weather Forecasting 2017, 5:2 Forecasting DOI: 10.4172/2332-2594.1000207 Research Article Open Access A Comparative Study of the Physico-Chemical Characteristics of Dust-Full Particles in Three Stations of Birjand City in Eastern Iran Amin Donyaei* and Alireze Pourkhabbaz Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Birjand, Birjand, Iran *Corresponding author: Donyaei A, Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Birjand, Birjand, Iran, Tel: +985632202301; Fax: +985632202517; E-mail: [email protected] Received date: June 06, 2017; Accepted date: June 28, 2017; Published date: July 06, 2017 Copyright: © 2017 Donyaei A, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract Dust storms happening frequently in arid and semiarid regions of the world carry huge amount of particulate matters; hence, these are recognized as one of the most important environmental issues at regional and international scales. This study aimed to evaluate heavy metals laden dustfall particles in Birjand, East Iran. Sampling of dustfall particles was conducted once every 1 month from July 2016 for 6 month at three stations of Agriculture university, Aboozar avenue, and Shokat university simultaneously using Deposit Gauge Method. The concentration of Fe and Mn were measured using Flame Atomic. Absorption Spectroscopy and Furnace Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy was used for analyzing Cd, Cr, Pb, As, Cu, and Zn. Then, pollution levels for the heavy metals were evaluated using Geo-Accumulation Index (Igeo) and Integrated Pollution Index (IPI). Mineralogy and morphology of the dustfall particles were inspected using X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. Igeo index indicated that levels of pollution for Pb and Zn higher than other among the dustfall particles of the three stations whereas the concentrations of the other heavy metals were not evaluated as contaminant. Moreover, means of IPI values calculated for stations of Agriculture, Aboozar, and Shokat were 1.51, 1.99 and 1.66 respectively. X-ray diffraction revealed abundance of silicate (quartz) and carbonate (calcite) minerals in dustfall particles. Additionally, scanning electron microscopy emphasized on similarity of shape of dustfall particles in the three stations. Mean of dustfall particles on area unit in Shokat station was less than Agriculture and Aboozar. Keywords: Dustfall phenomenon; Birjand; Heavy metals atmosphere is occurred with the origin of fine aggregates and these aggregates enjoy high frequency in dried and semi-dried regions. In Introduction fact, the dust is a kind of reaction to change in the vegetation of environment that in this regard, the role of human activities should be The phenomenon of air pollution in urban regions is one of attended beside the natural conditions of geographical environments. outcomes of the industrial revolution which has been embarked 300 The effects of dust may be kept at a distance of 4000 km from the main years ago and is daily increased with the development of industry and source and cause the outbreak of unfavourable environmental effects urbanism. Whatever is interpreted as "world crisis of urban pollution” and plenty damages in agricultural, industrial, transport and is in fact derived from disordering the balance between the main transmission systems. In addition to unstable climate, the existence or fundamental elements of natural environment? nonexistence of humidity is more effective in creating dust so that if The air pollution is one of the basic problems of modern societies. the unstable climate consists of humidity, it would create rain, storm According to definition: the air pollution is predicated to the existence and thunder and if it has no humidity, it would cause dust storm [3]. of one or several contaminants in the free air in an amount, time and The dust particles, with regard to their movement origin and path, features which is dangerous for the life of human, animal and plant enjoy high capacity in transporting the heavy metals. So, the study of and things and appurtenance of life, in a way that causes disorder in amount of heavy metals contamination in dust is of much importance the relative welfare of human [1]. because of the dangers which threat the health of human beings. In The phenomenon of dust is one of the air pollutions with which we general, the heavy metal contamination in the particles of dust is were encounter in recent years. The dust is regarded to be the solid considered to be a serious problem because of toxicity, inseparability material composed of soil, metal anthropogenic mixtures and natural and concentration [4,5]. biogenic materials [2]. In general, two sources of human activities and detrital patterns of The phenomenon of dust is one of the serious bioenvironmental soil have been specified for the pollution of dust particles. This is problems in the specific regions of the world. Whereas the most dust of expected from the human resources to cause the contamination of heavy metals because of further industrial activities in urban regions; J Climatol Weather Forecasting, an open access journal Volume 5 • Issue 2 • 1000207 ISSN: 2332-2594 Citation: Donyaei A, Pourkhabbaz A (2017) A Comparative Study of the Physico-Chemical Characteristics of Dust-Full Particles in Three Stations of Birjand City in Eastern Iran. J Climatol Weather Forecasting 5: 207. doi:10.4172/2332-2594.1000207 Page 2 of 8 whereas the existence of heavy metals with high concentration in the coordinates of 3253 north latitude and 5913 east longitude and has dust particles in non-industrial regions is generally related to the been risen 1470 m above sea level. This town has been located at the erosion of geology structures specially soil [6]. gradient of Bagheran mountain range and nearly in the center of Birjand Desert and has been surrounded by the mountain range [14]. The heavy metals which form in the fine and light mixtures stay in the environment in a suspended form and at the time of atmosphere The climate of Birjand city is of semi-desert kind and has cold rain, some of these contaminants are dissolved in the rain and return winters and dry and hot summers. According to its climate, the rain to the earth's surface and the metals which exist in the structure of level of this city is low and the most level of raining is occurred from macro and heavy particles, deposit during the time and reach the 21 November to 21 May that this rain is often falls in form of snow in earth's surface. Generally, the existence of heavy metals in the winter. The air of Birjand has severe storm and dust in average in 12 atmosphere or dust causes the increase of these metals concentration days of year. in the body of citizenship of contaminated regions by swallowing, respiration and cutaneous absorption [7,8]. For example, it has been Sample preparation and analysis seen that the concentration of lead has been increased in the blood of children by its increase in the dust of atmosphere. If the children are In present research, the atmosphere dust sampling traps were fitted exposed to more than 10 microgram of lead, the decrease of on rooftops of three builds with 5 m heights and proper locative intelligence quotient would be tangible [9]. The severe effects of dispersion for the purpose of sampling atmosphere dust and studying cadmium such as lung and Prostate cancer, damaging Kidney, the heavy metals in the atmosphere of Birjand. Emphysema and Osteoporosis have been reported in different The sampling regions are including: Amirabad region, rooftop of resources. Also, it has been expressed that the respiration of air Agriculture faculty of Birjand University with the coordinates of 32° polluted with Chromium is resulted in Allergic rhinitis, attenuation of 51' 57N latitude and 59° 52' 20E longitude; the second station, the Immune system, severe respiratory problems such as Rhonchus and urban region of Aboozar avenue, rooftop of boyish dormitory with the cough [10]. coordinates of 32° 51' 57N latitude and 59° 8' 48E longitude; and the Of the previous studies about the constitutive mixtures of dust in third station, Shokatabad region, rooftop of central build of Birjand Asia and Middle East, we can refer to the ones carried out by Krueger University with the coordinates of 50° 37' 32N latitude and 59° 17' 21E et al.; Jaradat et al. in Iran, Rajabi and Suri [6,11,12] carried out some longitude (Figure 2). studies about some heavy metals which exist in dust in Sanandaj, Khorramabad and Andimeshk. The purpose of present research is the study of amount of heavy metals in dust particles of eastern half of Iran by the use of Geo- Accumulation Index and Integrated Pollution Index (IPI) [13]. Also, in this study, the nature and form of sampled dust particles was evaluated by the use of X-ray Diffraction and Scanning Electron Microscope for the purpose of comparing dust particles in two studying seasons. Materials and Methods Study area Figure 2: Position of sampling station. The Southern Khorasan province, with a land area of about 82864 square kilometer, covers 5/7 percent of total area of country. This province has been located in east of Iran beside eastern north of Lut The atmosphere dust sampling traps (Figure 3) consist of one leg, Desert (Figure 1). bottle for collecting dust, one funnel put conversely on the bottle and one glass for collecting particles. The dust samples were collected monthly during 6 months (21 June to 21 December). Six samples at each station and totally 18 samples were collected during these six months.