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Spatial variations in urban air pollution: impacts of diesel bus traffic and restaurant cooking at small scales

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Abstract

Air pollutant concentrations in urban areas exhibit strong spatial and temporal trends because of variations in land use and source distributions. While traffic is an important urban source of pollutants such as NO2 and particulate matter (PM), other sources can also contribute to observed spatiotemporal patterns. PM exposures are further complicated because urban-scale variations in fine particulate matter mass (PM2.5) concentrations can be decoupled from variations in PM physicochemical properties such as composition and the concentration of ultrafine particles (UFPs). Our goal was to quantify spatial gradients in both pollutant concentrations and PM characteristics over spatial scales ranging from hundreds of meters to several kilometers, along with sources influencing the observed spatial patterns. Continuous air pollutant concentrations were measured with a distributed network that consisted of a low-cost sensor package to measure pollutant gases (CO, NO2, O3, CO2), optical measurements of particulate black carbon (BC) and PM2.5, and UFP using condensation particle counters. The sampling sites were classified according to nearby land use for traffic, population, and restaurant density. Mean concentrations of BC and UFP vary by factors of approximately 4 and 3, respectively, across five typical urban sites in a 16 km2 sampling domain. Differences in traffic volume and composition (e.g., diesel bus activity) can describe some, but not all of the observed spatial and temporal differences between sites. Specifically, two sites separated by ~ 500 m in a downtown central business district have significant differences in BC (factor of 2) and UFP (~ 30%), though similar PM2.5 (< 10%), due to varying influences of diesel bus traffic and restaurant cooking emissions. The large spatial gradients have implications for data collection to inform spatial models such as land use regression (LUR). From the standpoint of site selection, the two downtown sites are nominally identical (e.g., both are high traffic, high-source activity sites) but have significant differences in measured pollutant concentrations and source impacts.

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All data will be available at https://kilthub.cmu.edu/ following publication.

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Acknowledgements

This work is part of the Center for Air, Climate and Energy Solution (CACES, www.caces.us). This publication was developed under Assistance Agreement No. RD83587301 awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This publication has not been reviewed by the EPA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Ruichen Song, Albert A. Presto, Provat Saha, Aja Ellis & R. Subramanian

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Naomi Zimmerman

  3. Allegheny County Health Department, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Aja Ellis

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  1. Ruichen Song
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Song, R., Presto, A.A., Saha, P. et al. Spatial variations in urban air pollution: impacts of diesel bus traffic and restaurant cooking at small scales. Air Qual Atmos Health 14, 2059–2072 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-021-01078-8

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