Air Pollution and Its Impacts – The City of Rijeka Case Study

During the late sixties and seventies the city of Rijeka underwent second rapid industrialization. Few huge plants (new petroleum refinery facilities, power plant, coke plant) were erected in the industrial zone eastwards from the city. As a consequence, high emission levels resulted in elevated ambient air pollution so that the city was one of the most polluted in Croatia during the mid-eighties. Thus the annual means of sulphur dioxide exceeded double the WHO guideline at some urban sites. The beginning of air pollution monitoring programme dates back to early seventies with first measurements of sulphur dioxide (SO2), black smoke (BS) and fallout within the city. Due to air pollution from the newly built industrial plants, the programme was extended to more parameters at the beginning of eighties, thus including: nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen sulphide (H2S), total suspended particulates (TSP), metals and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). All these parameters were measured by chemical methods, while first automatic network with only three analyzers (SO2, O3 and TSP) was established only in 2000, as the first automatic network in Croatia. As the ambient levels of air pollutants diminished considerably since mid-nineties, a synthesis of the work done in the last 25 years dealing with long-term air pollution and its effects on materials, plants and humans is presented.