Innovative methods for physicochemical and dynamic characterization of ambient aerosols and other environmental systems

The present Thesis reports the main scientific achievements in my PhD research activity based on the application of multivariate statistical methods for Environmental Chemistry (academic discipline: CHIM/12) and, in particular, in the treatment of atmospheric aerosols data. During the three-year PhD period, I have faced several topics which have led to the publication of eight scientific articles including three as the first author. My publications can be conceptually grouped into three distinct parts: 1) Design and optimization of innovative experimental methodologies for the analysis of Airborne Particulate Matter (PM) and data interpretation, as related to human health, air quality, and climate change. 2) Definition of practical guidelines and optimal use of PM low-cost sensors based on the Optical Particle Counting (OPC) developed on laser scattering devices. 3) Analysis of other environmental matrices (different from airborne particulate matter) and data interpretation. Furthermore, this Thesis describes the preliminary results of other research work presently in progress including: 1) Physico-chemical and meteorological characterization of atmospheric aerosols in southern Spain as part of the FRESA project. 2) Study and characterization of the processes and dynamics of atmospheric aerosol in the touristic Pertosa-Auletta cave (Italy, SA). 3) Characterization and quantification of radionuclides in innovative building materials defined as “Geopolymers”. The common thread of all my scientific investigation is multivariate statistics for environmental assessment purposes. Multivariate Statistics includes all the mathematical-statistical methods to study complex sets of data, a typical situation in environmental chemistry, in order to extract tangible and exhaustive quali-quantitative information. The term Chemometrics is going to often be used in this Thesis to indicate mathematical-statistical methods applied to Chemistry.