Urban Air Quality: Aerosol Pollution Exploration and Impact Assessment

Although the implementation of the European Union's policies has contributed substan-tially to reducing air pollution in recent years, PM2.5 remains a pollutant that poses sig-nificant risks to the environment and public health. The present study examines the ap-plication of a novel method for assessing the environmental impact and risk associated with this pollutant. The new integrated approach for air quality evaluation and predic-tion of the effects and risk of certain pollutants is based on AOD analysis, considering the AERONET database. For its validation, the new approach was applied based on moni-toring air quality data for two cities in Romania, considering 13 years (from 2011 to 2023) in one case and 12 years (from 2012 to 2023) in the other. The results demonstrated that an AOD risk index can be developed and utilised for air quality evaluation and prediction, enabling the estimation of impacts and risks. In this case, the aerosols measured by AERONET over Cluj-Napoca for 13 years (2011 – 2023) were dominated by the occurrence of a 46% elemental carbon (EC) and organic carbon (OC) mixture, while the measure-ments over Iasi city for 12 years (2012 – 2023) were dominated by the occurrence of 55% EC and OC mixture. The impacts and risks, as calculated by the AOD index for EC, show few significant ones, with an AOD range of 0.88 to 1.05 for Iasi city and 0.73 to 0.88 for Cluj-Napoca.