Modeling and evaluation of urban pollution events of atmospheric heavy metals from a large Cu-smelter

Metal smelting and processing are highly polluting activities that have a strong influence on the levels of heavy metals in air, soil, and crops. We employ an atmospheric transport and dispersion model to predict the pollution levels originated from the second largest Cu-smelter in Europe. The model predicts that the concentrations of copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), and arsenic (As) in an urban area close to the Cu-smelter can reach 170, 70, and 30ngm−3, respectively. The model captures all the observed urban pollution events, but the magnitude of the elemental concentrations is predicted to be lower than that of the observed values; ~300, ~500, and ~100ngm−3 for Cu, Zn, and As, respectively. The comparison between model and observations showed an average correlation coefficient of 0.62±0.13. The simulation shows that the transport of heavy metals reaches a peak in the afternoon over the urban area. The under-prediction in the peak is explained by the simulated stronger winds compared with monitoring data. The stronger simulated winds enhance the transport and dispersion of heavy metals to the regional area, diminishing the impact of pollution events in the urban area. This model, driven by high resolution meteorology (2km in horizontal), predicts the hourly-interval evolutions of atmospheric heavy metal pollutions in the close by urban area of industrial hotspot. [Display omitted] •Atmospheric heavy metals from a large Cu-smelter were predicted by the HYSPLIT.•The high-resolution predictions were evaluated with hourly measurement data.•The model captured all the urban pollution events during two measurement campaigns.•The transport of Cu-smelter pollutants peaked during the afternoon at the urban area.•The low-resolution global HYSPLIT predictions were further constrained.