Abstract: The pollution characteristics of PM₁₀ over Hefei were analyzed based on the data from 10 air quality auto-monitoring stations in winter (from October to December) of 2013.The PM₁₀ atmospheric environment capacity for the pollution source in Hefei was estimated using a linear programming method.Before estimation of the environmental capacity,the related pretreatments included investigation of the main atmospheric pollution sources in Hefei,simulation of the PM₁₀ mass concentration using the CALPUFF (CALifornia PUFF) model,and establishing a transfer matrix for atmospheric pollutants.The results show that the daily variation of the PM₁₀ mass concentration demonstrates a typical bimodal distribution in winter,with the peaks appearing in the morning and evening,and the minimum values in the afternoon and midnight.The high values of PM₁₀ mass concentration appear at the northeastern part and the low ones appear at the southwestern part of Hefei.The simulation results of the CALPUFF model are basically consistent with the observations,and can virtually reflect the spatial distribution of PM₁₀ mass concentration in Hefei.When the area source emission reduces 705.233 t·a^-1,the point source gets 12 935 t·a^-1 of PM₁₀ atmospheric environment capacity in Hefei.