Calidad del aire
Contaminacion por metales pesados
Ambient air quality
Heavy metals contamination
Three locations in Cantabria (Spain) exceed the daily PM10 limit value more times than the 35 allowed by the European Directive on ambient air quality so the present work was made in order to identify possible sources of PM10 through the monitoring of heavy metals associated to airborne particulate matter by sampling over three years, analysing the samples and employing the factor analysis model called as Positive Matrix Factorization in order to distribute them in factors. The factors represent potential emission sources and present a characteristic profile. The profiles were evaluated in order to associate them to the sources. The analyses revealed that the three locations have its main source well defined. The first location has the traffic as its main contribution source, the second location has a strong influence of iron foundry and casting industry and the third one presents a main contributing source clearly related with a ferro-manganese alloys industry. The other possible sources identified were secondary industrial sources, combustion sources and traffic sources mixed with the previous ones.
