A two-year advanced analysis of air quality monitoring data in Tripoli region, North Lebanon

Abstract

Air pollution is an international threat to humans across the world; hence, many health and environmental organizations encourage the monitoring of air quality in order to evaluate the ambient air quality. While the main attention in Lebanon, concerning air pollution, is the capital Beirut, few of the research focus goes to Tripoli, which is the second largest city after the capital. Therefore, this thesis project revolves around the advanced analysis of air pollution data collected at two sites in the Tripoli region: King Fahed Park (KFP) and Beddawi (BED) over the period of 2 years (2016-2017). This study included a compliance analysis of the criteria air pollutants CO, NO2, O3, PM2.5, PM10 and PMtot. A series of time variation, correlation, and polar plots were produced to uncover pollution trends and possible contributing sources. Additionally, the health effects of these pollutants were assessed using the Air Quality Index analysis. The results of a compliance analysis done using the recent WHO guidelines showed a high exceedance rate for hourly NO2 values in BED. In KFP, NO2, PM10 and PM2.5 showed high yearly and daily averages that significantly exceeded the WHO guidelines, while the 8hr average levels of O3 were found to be compliant. A polar plot analysis showed that in BED, possible NO and NO2 emissions were coming from local urban sources, Deir Amar electric power plant and the urban site of Tripoli depending on the air mass directions. Whereas, in KFP, the urban pollution of Tripoli and Al Mina zones including ships could be the major contributors of high NOx levels. In addition, the light industry zone at Bahsas as well as the emissions from the city of Tripoli were found to contribute significantly in PM2.5 and PM10 high loads. However, O3 concentrations were found to be associated with distant sources outside of the Tripoli region. The AQI analysis showed that PM10 and NO2 were responsible for a high exposure to air pollution between the years 2016 and 2017, with 213 days of high index. It is deduced that sensitive groups and people with lung or cardiovascular diseases could have been the most affected by the high air pollution exposure. The outcome of this study indicates that in 2016 and 2017 both local and distant emission sources contributed to high air pollution levels in Tripoli region. It is recommended that the results found in this study be compared with clinical and pharmaceutical data from the region of the study in order to better understand the impacts of air pollution on the local community in Tripoli.