Air quality work at Guelph: GAViM and a traffic tunnel study

The Guelph Aerosol and Visibility Monitoring (GAViM) program presently runs three monitoring sites: two rural sites compatible with the IMPROVE protocol and one urban site mostly for special comparison studies. Fine aerosol is analyzed by the Laser Integrated Plate Method (LIPM), Proton Elastic Scattering Analysis (PESA), Proton Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) and gravimetric analysis. Air quality data from the presently running sites and from two rural sites operated in the past are available through the WWW. The Guelph Scanning Proton Laboratory also participates in other aerosol programs: PIXE was employed to determine the composition of the ambient aerosol in a Vancouver traffic tunnel, to identify the main emission sources and to make estimates of vehicle emission factors. The PIXE facility was also modified for analysis of size-fractionated samples from the PIXE International Cascade Impactor (PCI) sampler. Significant improvement in detection limits for light elements due to the two-detector PIXE system used in Guelph, was justified particularly because of low air particulate loadings in case of PCI.