Study of aerosols collected in a speleotherapeutic cave situated below Budapest, Hungary

The Szemlohegy-cave is one of the well-known hydrothermal caves of the Rozs adomb area of Budapest, which have been used for speleotherapy of respirato ry diseases for years. It is known from the periodically changing airborne radon activity concentration data, that airflow of seasonally reversed dire ction are formed along the cave passages and fissures due to the temperatur e difference between the surface and cave air. This means that an intensive interaction takes place between the cave and its environment, The pollutio n of nearby waters and the urban atmospheric air represents a real danger f or these caves below Buda, which recently became the part of the UNESCO Wor ld Heritage. The study of cave aerosols should be very important from the p oint of view of either the control possibilities of the environmental impac t or speleotherapy. and probably helps in getting acquainted with the cave- forming processes. In this work we applied our standard aerosol sampling me thod to the high-humidity environment of the caves. and we studied the elem ental composition, size fractionation as well as the spatial distribution a nd the seasonal variation of cave aerosols. Thanks to the sensitivity of PI XE traces of anthropogenic pollution of the Budapest ail are shown in the S zemlohegy-cave. Measured elemental concentrations remained less than one-te nth the air quality standard valid for the increasingly protected areas. (C ) 1999 Elsevier Science B,V. All rights reserved.