Air pollution has a negative impact on human health. To care for air in Poland and around the world its quality is monitored. Thus, it is possible to develop appropriate plans for improving air quality in certain areas. Unfortunately, the number of traditional, professional, and stationary devices is usually insufficient. This article presents the concept of using low-cost PM measuring devices to increase the spatiotemporal resolution of air quality measurements supplementing the network of reference devices. The example of Nowy Sącz shows the use of such devices for the detection of urban areas with locally increased values of pollutants originating from low-level emissions. For this purpose, it has been used and compares data regarding the concentration of PM10 from low-cost devices with data from the referential station. To detect local “hot-spots” it has also applied wind speed measurements. This article shows that local PM hot-spots can be detected – especially on days with low wind speeds.

This article presents a long-term evaluation of low-cost particulate matter (PM) sensors in a field measurements campaign. Evaluation was performed in two phases. During the first five months of the campaign, two PM sensors were simultaneously compared with the results from the reference air quality monitoring station in various atmospheric conditions—from the days with freezing cold (minimum temperature below −10 °C) and high relative humidity (up to 95%) to the days with the maximum temperature above 30 °C and low relative humidity (at the level of 25%). Based on the PM₁₀ measurements, the correlation coefficients for both devices in relation to the reference station were determined (r = 0.91 and r = 0.94, respectively), as well as the impact of temperature and relative humidity on measurements from the low-cost sensors in relation to the reference values. The correction function was formulated based on this large set of low-cost PM₁₀ measurements and referential values. The effectiveness of the corrective function was verified during the second measurement campaign carried out in the city of Nowy Sącz (located in southern Poland) for the same five months in the following year. The absolute values of the long-term percentage errors obtained after adjustment were reduced to a maximum of about 20%, and the average percentage errors were usually around 10%.

The aim of the study was to determine air pollution over the sea surface (North Sea and Baltic Sea) compared to the situation in ports, as well as to examine the impact of ships on the level of particulate matter (PM) concentration. The measurements, made during the two-week cruise of the tall ship Fryderyk Chopin, demonstrated that the principal source of PM emission over the sea surface are passing ships equipped with internal combustion engines, including quite numerous units powered by marine oil. The highest pollution levels were observed in locations distant from the coast, with increasing concentrations when other ships were approaching. During the cruise, at least two places were identified with increased PM concentration (18–28 μg/m³ for PM₁₀ and 15–25 μg/m³ for PM_2.5) caused by passing ships. The share of PM_2.5 fraction in the general PM concentration in these places increased from 70–72% to 82–85%, which means that combustion emission dominated. In turn, measurements made in ports (Copenhagen and Kołobrzeg) showed lower levels of air pollution and indicated a typical variability of the PM concentrations characteristic for land areas. The results confirm the need for determining suitable solutions for sustainable sea transport.

The study attempts to compare the total annual emissions of selected air pollutants emitted during occasional grilling and the emission of the same pollutants from small domestic heating installations. For this purpose, in the absence of any data on the emission of pollutants during grilling processes, tests were carried out consisting of measuring the concentration of air pollutants in exhaust streams from two types of grills (solid fuel grill powered by charcoal briquette and gas grill powered by liquid propane), using popularly prepared dishes (previously marinated meat and raw, seasoned mixed vegetables). The concentrations of PM_2.5, CH₄, CO, CO₂, H₂O, NH₃, N₂O, NO, NO₂, SO₂ were measured in the exhaust stream from both grills using a particulate matter (PM) measuring device and a portable spectrometer, separately while grilling the same portions of meat and vegetables. Then, considering the available data on Poles’ barbecue habits, the emissions that are released into the air during occasional grilling were estimated. The calculated emissions were compared with the data on emissions from domestic heating installations used in Poland. It has been shown that during grilling, as much as 2.30, 92.07, 4.11, 3.83, 2.96, and 9.81 Gg of PM_2.5, CO, NO_x, SO₂, NH₃, and CH₄ may be released into the atmosphere in Poland, respectively. In the case of PM, the amount of the pollutant emitted to the air is over 100 times lower than the emissions caused by the operation of small heating installations. In the case of other pollutants, the differences are smaller. Nevertheless, emissions from grills should not be underestimated as, in certain periods of the year, these sources may be responsible for not meeting the air quality standards in selected areas of the country, and thus the excessive exposure of people to pollutants resulting in negative health consequences. Therefore, attention was paid to the legitimacy of abandoning the use of charcoal and charcoal briquette grills and replacing them with gas-powered grills or electric ones, not only due to the health benefits of food and lower human exposure, but also by the reason of ecological values.

Conventional NO₂ monitoring devices are relatively cumbersome, expensive, and have a relatively high-power consumption that limits their use to fixed sites. On the other hand, they offer high-quality measurements. In contrast, the low-cost NO₂ sensors offer greater flexibility, are smaller, and allow greater coverage of the area with the measuring devices. However, their disadvantage is much lower accuracy. The main goal of this study was to investigate the measurement data quality of NO2-B43F Alphasense sensors. The measurement performance analysis of Alphasense NO2-B43F sensors was conducted in two research areas in Poland. Sensors were placed near fixed, professional air quality monitoring stations, carrying out measurements based on reference methods, in the following periods: July–November, and December–May. Results of the study show that without using sophisticated correction methods, the range of measured air pollution concentrations may be greater than their actual values in ambient air—measured in the field by fixed stations. In the case of summer months (with air temperature over 30 °C), the long-term mean absolute percentage error was over 150% and the sensors, using the methods recommended by the manufacturer, in the case of high temperatures could even show negative values. After applying the mathematical correction functions proposed in this article, it was possible to significantly reduce long-term errors (to 40–70% per month, regardless of the location of the measurements) and eliminate negative measurement values. The proposed method is based on the recalculation of the raw measurement, air temperature, and air RH and does not require the use of extensive analytical tools.