Multivariate analysis of metals content in urban snow near traffic lanes in Novi Sad, Serbia

Abstract

During December 2009 snow was collected at twenty two locations across the urban area of Novi Sad, directly from roads and from traffic islands near crossroads. The total metal concentration was determined for each of ten metals (Al, Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mn, Na, Ni, Pb, Zn) using the ICP-OES analytical technique. The metal found to have the lowest concentration was Ni (0.0265 mg dm-3). The metal with the highest concentration was Na (10786 mg dm-3), which is a consequence of sodium chloride being used as de-icing salt on the roads. The metal with the second highest concentration at all locations was Ca; this was most likely the result of soil dust. The Spearman's rank correlation coefficients between analyzed metals were calculated to determine how concentrations of metals were related. A cluster analysis was carried out on the obtained data sets, using both hierarchical and partitioning methods in order to identify associations among metals and/or locations. It was shown that traffic density was not the most important factor that caused differences between the concentrations of the metals in samples.

Keywords

• metal concentration
• snow
• traffic
• correlation
• cluster analysis