Investigation of Temporal Changes in the Dust Particle Concentration in Zabol City Air Using Air Quality Index

During the past decade, the scientific community has noticed the important impacts of suspended dust in the air on climate, human health, the environment, and various socio-economic sectors. The dust concentration has a negative relationship with human health so that the increase of dust concentration leads to an increase in the number of patients with heart and respiratory diseases, and human health is seriously threatened. The undesirable phenomenon of dust storms is one of the natural disasters that affect Zabol city due to its geographical location and proximity to the dried bed of Hamoon wetland. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the temporal changes in dust concentrations over a 10-year period in Zabol city.

The concentration of dust particles (PM10) was measured using fixed air pollution measuring devices during a period of 10 years from 2009 to 2019. All data were recorded on a daily and annual basis and the variations during this period were examined in this study. The given data were measured and analyzed based on the air quality index in order to evaluate the air quality changes.  

In this study, the average annual concentration of PM10 has been 405, 425, 451, 659, 532, 152, 222, 196, 170, and 67 μg/m3, respectively, from 2009 to 2019. The highest particle concentration was determined at 4932 µg/m3 in the summer of 2016, which was the result of  120-day storms, the dried bed of Hamoon wetland, and the transfer of dust particles.

According to the standard, the concentration of PM10 should not exceed 50 µg/m3; however, this value has reached several times the standard limit and 33 times the standard limit at maximum during the 10-year period.