Parallel measurements of PM10 and total suspended particles (TSP) - Estimation of PM10-characteristics from TSP data

During 1997 and 2998 parallel measurements of total suspended particles (TS P) and PM10 were performed at 8 selected sites of the Swiss Federal Air Pol lution Monitoring Network. The aim was to investigate the relation between TSP and PM10 for differently polluted sites. It turned out that at all site s, which were not directly dominated by local sources of coarse dust, the r atio PM10/TSP (yearly means) was 0.86 with a standard deviation from site t o site, resp. from year to year of only 0.04. However, at the site Bern, si tuated next to a very busy road, the ratio was 0.63 and therefore considera bly lower. The results of the parallel measurements demonstrate that it is possible to estimate PM10-characteristics from TSP data series. On the one hand it is true that the PM10/TSP ratios of daily samples vary too much to allow the estimation of single daily values of PM10 from TSP data. However, it is possible to get quite good estimates for the yearly means of PM10 an d for the number of exceedances of the short term limit value of 50 mug/m(3 ).