Notice of RetractionAtmospheric Particle Deposition and Element Distribution in Xi´an, China

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

The presenting author of this paper has the option to appeal this decision by contacting TPII@ieee.org.

Samples of settled dusts from roadsides and a 24-storey residential building in the city of Xi´an, China were collected between June, 2009 and September, 2010. Physical characterization and chemical analysis of these samples show that the daily average dust deposition rates at the residential building varied from 0.13 to 0.18 g m^-2 day^-1 (average 0.13 ± 0.02 g m^-2 day^-1); Bi, Pb and Zn were significantly enriched in the road dusts; the average value of T-Hg content in the road dusts (85.67 ± 47.53 ng g^-1) was higher than that (64.16 ± 23.98 ng g^-1) in the samples collected from the residential building. These results suggest that automobile emissions and industrial combustion processes might contribute to the high rates of dust deposition and high level of toxic elements in the city.