Combustion remains an important yet hazardous source of emissions, and isolating its contribution to ambient PM 1.0 is challenging because polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are emitted from multiple combustion sources. PM 1.0 was collected at 6 h resolution ( n = 162) in western Korea from September 8 to October 18, 2024, near major point sources. The chemical composition, molecular markers (levoglucosan, mannosan, terephthalic acid, dehydroabietic acid, 6PPD-Q), PAHs including picene, and dithiothreitol-based oxidative potential (QDTT-OP) were measured, and source contributions were resolved using positive matrix factorization (PMF). PMF identified PET waste combustion (28.8%) and wood waste combustion (18.1%), while coal combustion accounted for just 4.1% of PM 1.0 mass. Despite its low mass fraction, the chemical influence of coal was evident. Conventional PAH ratio analysis revealed the co-occurrence of elevated picene and higher QDTT-OP in combustion-dominated domains. A PMF-constrained diagnostic framework was developed using picene-normalized ratios and a scaled composite marker, LMT*, defined as LMT/1000, where LMT is the sum of levoglucosan, mannosan, and terephthalic acid. PAHs were categorized into L-PAHs and H-PAHs. The proposed screening thresholds were Pic/(Pic + L-PAHs) ≥ 0.06 for coal combustion and LMT*/(LMT* + L-PAHs) ≥ 0.10 for PET and wood waste combustion.
Park et al. (Sat,) studied this question.