Kaolinite based risk assessment of traffic-related pollution for selected historical libraries in Istanbul: Insights from urban topsoils studied by DRIFTS

Abstract

This study involves mid infrared (MIR) region (400-4000 cm-1) Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy (DRIFTS) investigation of urban topsoil samples nearby historical libraries in historic peninsula, Fatih district, Istanbul, Turkey. With DRIFTS, we aimed to detect traffic-driven pollution around these libraries that contain cultural heritage indoors. DRIFTS is a rapid and versatile technique that can be both used in laboratory and in situ soil analysis and it is very sensitive to both organic and mineral soil composition. IR spectral discrimination of topsoil samples collected nearby libraries were rapidly and accurately determined. Another purpose of this work was to investigate the possible sources of pollutants on urban topsoils nearby these historical libraries by their soil mineralogy, mainly based on kaolinite, total recoverable hydrocarbon (TRH), disorder index (DI) and sulfur dioxide (SO2), as an anthropogenic source, using DRIFTS. To the best of our knowledge, we report the first DRIFTS determination of the various traffic-driven pollution sources absorbed by urban topsoils nearby historical libraries.