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- ItemExposure and Respiratory Tract Deposition Dose of Equivalent Black Carbon in High Altitudes(Basel, Switzerland : MDPI AG, 2020) Madueño, Leizel; Kecorius, Simonas; Andrade, Marcos; Wiedensohler, AlfredThe traffic microenvironment accounts for a significant fraction of the total daily dose of inhaled air pollutants. The adverse effects of air pollution may be intensified in high altitudes (HA) due to increased minute ventilation (MV), which may result in higher deposition doses compared to that at sea level. Despite this, air quality studies in regions with combined high pollution levels and enhanced inhalation are limited. The main goals of this study are to investigate how the choice of travel mode (walking, microbus, and cable car ride) determines (i) the personal exposure to equivalent black carbon (eBC) and (ii) the corresponding potential respiratory deposited dose (RDD) in HA. For this investigation, we chose La Paz and El Alto in Bolivia as HA representative cities. The highest eBC exposure occurred in microbus commutes (13 μg m-3), while the highest RDD per trip was recorded while walking (6.3 μg) due to increased MV. On the other hand, the lowest eBC exposure and RDD were observed in cable car commute. Compared with similar studies done at sea level, our results revealed that a HA city should reduce exposure by 1.4 to 1.8-fold to achieve similar RDD at sea level, implying that HA cities require doubly aggressive and stringent road emission policies compared to those at sea level. © 2020 by the authors.
- ItemBlack carbon and particulate matter mass concentrations in the Metropolitan District of Caracas, Venezuela: An assessment of temporal variation and contributing sources(Washington, DC : BioOne, 2022) Engelhardt, Vanessa; Pérez, Tibisay; Donoso, Loreto; Müller, Thomas; Wiedensohler, AlfredAtmospheric aerosols play an important role in atmospheric processes and human health. Characterizing atmospheric aerosols and identifying their sources in large cities is relevant to propose site-specific air pollution mitigation strategies. In this study, we measured the mass concentration of atmospheric aerosols with an aerodynamic diameter smaller than 2.5 mm (PM2.5) in the city of Caracas (urban) and in a tropical montane cloud forest (suburban site, located in a mountainous area 11 km far from Caracas) between June 2018 and October 2019. We also measured equivalent black carbon (eBC) mass concentration in PM2.5 in Caracas during the same period. Our goal is to assess PM2.5 and eBC temporal variation and identify their major sources in the area. eBC showed a pronounced diurnal cycle in the urban site, mainly modulated by traffic circulation and the diurnal changes of the mixing layer height. In contrast, PM2.5 showed stable median values during the day with slight variations like that of eBC. In the forest site, PM2.5 values were higher in the afternoons due to the convective transport of aerosols from Caracas and other surrounding urban areas located in adjacent valleys. The annual median for eBC and PM2.5 was 1.6 and 9.2 mg m–3, respectively, in the urban site, while PM2.5 in the forest site was 6.6 mg m–3. To our knowledge, these are the first measurements of this type in the northernmost area of South America. eBC and PM2.5 sources identification during wet and dry seasons was obtained by percentiles of the conditional bivariate probability function (CBPF). CBPF showed seasonal variations of eBC and PM2.5 sources and that their contributions are higher during the dry season. Biomass burning events are a relevant contributing source of aerosols for both sites of measurements inferred by fire pixels from satellite data, the national fire department’s statistics data, and backward trajectories. Our results indicate that biomass burning might affect the atmosphere on a regional scale, contribute to regional warming, and have implications for local and regional air quality and, therefore, human health.
- ItemNo Evidence for a Significant Impact of Heterogeneous Chemistry on Radical Concentrations in the North China Plain in Summer 2014(Columbus, Ohio : American Chemical Society, 2020) Tan, Zhaofeng; Hofzumahaus, Andreas; Lu, Keding; Brown, Steven S.; Holland, Frank; Huey, Lewis Gregory; Kiendler-Scharr, Astrid; Li, Xin; Liu, Xiaoxi; Ma, Nan; Min, Kyung-Eun; Rohrer, Franz; Shao, Min; Wahner, Andreas; Wang, Yuhang; Wiedensohler, Alfred; Wu, Yusheng; Wu, Zhijun; Zeng, Limin; Zhang, Yuanhang; Fuchs, HendrikThe oxidation of nitric oxide to nitrogen dioxide by hydroperoxy (HO2) and organic peroxy radicals (RO2) is responsible for the chemical net ozone production in the troposphere and for the regeneration of hydroxyl radicals, the most important oxidant in the atmosphere. In Summer 2014, a field campaign was conducted in the North China Plain, where increasingly severe ozone pollution has been experienced in the last years. Chemical conditions in the campaign were representative for this area. Radical and trace gas concentrations were measured, allowing for calculating the turnover rates of gas-phase radical reactions. Therefore, the importance of heterogeneous HO2 uptake on aerosol could be experimentally determined. HO2 uptake could have suppressed ozone formation at that time because of the competition with gas-phase reactions that produce ozone. The successful reduction of the aerosol load in the North China Plain in the last years could have led to a significant decrease of HO2 loss on particles, so that ozone-forming reactions could have gained importance in the last years. However, the analysis of the measured radical budget in this campaign shows that HO2 aerosol uptake did not impact radical chemistry for chemical conditions in 2014. Therefore, reduced HO2 uptake on aerosol since then is likely not the reason for the increasing number of ozone pollution events in the North China Plain, contradicting conclusions made from model calculations reported in the literature. © 2020 American Chemical Society.
- ItemRespiratory tract deposition of inhaled roadside ultrafine refractory particles in a polluted megacity of South-East Asia(Amsterdam [u.a.] : Elsevier Science, 2019) Kecorius, Simonas; Madueño, Leizel; Löndahl, Jakob; Vallar, Edgar; Galvez, Maria Cecilia; Idolor, Luisito F.; Gonzaga-Cayetano, Mylene; Müller, Thomas; Birmili, Wolfram; Wiedensohler, AlfredRecent studies demonstrate that Black Carbon (BC) pollution in economically developing megacities remain higher than the values, which the World Health Organization considers to be safe. Despite the scientific evidence of the degrees of BC exposure, there is still a lack of understanding on how the severe levels of BC pollution affect human health in these regions. We consider information on the respiratory tract deposition dose (DD) of BC to be essential in understanding the link between personal exposure to air pollutants and corresponding health effects. In this work, we combine data on fine and ultrafine refractory particle number concentrations (BC proxy), and activity patterns to derive the respiratory tract deposited amounts of BC particles for the population of the highly polluted metropolitan area of Manila, Philippines. We calculated the total DD of refractory particles based on three metrics: refractory particle number, surface area, and mass concentrations. The calculated DD of total refractory particle number in Metro Manila was found to be 1.6 to 17 times higher than average values reported from Europe and the U.S. In the case of Manila, ultrafine particles smaller than 100 nm accounted for more than 90% of the total deposited refractory particle dose in terms of particle number. This work is a first attempt to quantitatively evaluate the DD of refractory particles and raise awareness in assessing pollution-related health effects in developing megacities. We demonstrate that the majority of the population may be highly affected by BC pollution, which is known to have negative health outcomes if no actions are taken to mitigate its emission. For the governments of such metropolitan areas, we suggest to revise currently existing environmental legislation, raise public awareness, and to establish supplementary monitoring of black carbon in parallel to already existing PM 10 and PM 2.5 measures. © 2019