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Abstract: Nitrogen oxides (NO x ) and black carbon (BC) emission factors (EF) of 440 on-road diesel trucks were determined by conducting on-road chasing studies in Beijing and Chongqing, China, in the winter 2010. NO x and BC EF distributions are reported. The median NO x EFs for trucks sampled on level roads in Chongqing and Beijing are 40.0 and 47.4g kg-fuel−1, respectively. The median BC EFs are 1.1 and 0.4g kg-fuel−1in Chongqing and Beijing, respectively. In addition, a clear downward trend of BC EFs of on-road diesel trucks sampled in Beijing since 2008 is observed. Moreover, Beijing-registered trucks had the lowest BC EFs among the entire sample. These observations appear to reflect the effectiveness of emission standard and fuel quality standard implemented in Beijing (China IV) and nationwide (China III) in reducing BC (and likely overall particulate matter) emission. However, NO x EFs for Beijing-registered trucks did not show lower value than those from other regions. Unlike black carbon, there is no clear correlation between emission controls and NO x emissions from the sampled on-road trucks. Further analysis shows that trucks with high BC EFs do not usually have high NO x EFs, and vice versa, indicating that the current emission standards implemented in Beijing and nationwide have only limited impact on NO x emissions control. Therefore, effective multi-pollutant control strategies and in-use compliance programs are imperative to reduce the overall emissions from the transportation sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The aggressive traffic interventions and emission control measures implemented to improve air quality during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games created a valuable case study to evaluate the effectiveness of these measures on mitigating air pollution and protecting public health. In this paper, we report the results from our field campaign in summer 2008 on the on-road emission factors of carbon monoxide, black carbon (BC) and ultrafine particles (UFP) as well as the ambient BC concentrations. The fleet average emission factors for light-duty gasoline vehicles (LDGV) showed considerable reduction in the Olympic year (2008) compared to the pre-Olympic year (2007). Our measurement of Black Carbon (BC), a primary pollutant, at different elevations at the ambient site suggests consistent decrease in BC concentrations as the height increased near the ground level, which indicates that the nearby ground level sources, probably dominated by traffic, contributed to a large portion of BC concentrations in the lower atmospheric layer in Beijing during summertime. These observations indicate that people living in near ground levels experience higher exposures than those living in higher floors in Beijing. The BC diurnal patterns on days when traffic control were in place during the Olympic Games were compared to those on non-traffic-control days in both 2007 and in 2008. These patterns strongly suggest that diesel trucks are a major source of summertime BC in Beijing. The median BC concentration on Olympic days was 3.7 μg m−3, which was dramatically lower than the value on non-traffic-control days, indicating the effectiveness of traffic control regulations in BC reduction in Beijing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, we report the results and analysis of a recent field campaign in August 2007 investigating the impacts of emissions from transportation on air quality and community concentrations in Beijing, China. We conducted measurements in three different environments, on-road, roadside and ambient. The carbon monoxide, black carbon and ultrafine particle number emission factors for on-road light-duty vehicles are derived to be 95gkg−1-fuel, 0.3gkg−1-fuel and 1.8×1015 particleskg−1-fuel, respectively. The emission factors for on-road heavy-duty vehicles are 50gkg−1-fuel, 1.3gkg−1-fuel and 1.1×1016 particleskg−1-fuel, respectively. The carbon monoxide emission factors from this study agree with those derived from remote sensing and on-board vehicle emission testing systems in China. The on-road black carbon and particle number emission factors for Chinese vehicles are reported for the first time in the literature. Strong traffic impacts can be observed from the concentrations measured in these different environments. Most clear is a reflection of diesel truck traffic activity in black carbon concentrations. The comparison of the particle size distributions measured at the three environments suggests that the traffic is a major source of ultrafine particles. A four-day traffic control experiment conducted by the Beijing Government as a pilot to test the effectiveness of proposed controls was found to be effective in reducing extreme concentrations that occurred at both on-road and ambient environments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background: A travel mode shift to active transportation such as bicycling would help reduce traffic volume and related air pollution emissions as well as promote increased physical activity level. Cyclists, however, are at risk for exposure to vehicle-related air pollutants due to their proximity to vehicle traffic and elevated respiratory rates. To promote safe bicycle commuting, the City of Berkeley, California, has designated a network of residential streets as "Bicycle Boulevards." We hypothesized that cyclist exposure to air pollution would be lower on these Bicycle Boulevards when compared to busier roads and this elevated exposure may result in reduced lung function. Methods: We recruited 15 healthy adults to cycle on two routes - a low-traffic Bicycle Boulevard route and a high-traffic route. Each participant cycled on the low-traffic route once and the high-traffic route once. We mounted pollutant monitors and a global positioning system (GPS) on the bicycles. The monitors were all synced to GPS time so pollutant measurements could be spatially plotted. We measured lung function using spirometry before and after each bike ride. Results: We found that fine and ultrafine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and black carbon were all elevated on the high-traffic route compared to the low-traffic route. There were no corresponding changes in the lung function of healthy non-asthmatic study subjects. We also found that wind-speed affected pollution concentrations. Conclusions: These results suggest that by selecting low-traffic Bicycle Boulevards instead of heavily trafficked roads, cyclists can reduce their exposure to vehicle-related air pollution. The lung function results indicate that elevated pollutant exposure may not have acute negative effects on healthy cyclists, but further research is necessary to determine long-term effects on a more diverse population. This study and broader field of research have the potential to encourage policy-makers and city planners to expand infrastructure to promote safe and healthy bicycle commuting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Daily commutes may contribute disproportionately to overall daily inhalations of urban air contaminants. Understanding factors that explain variability of exposures during travel, and especially differences across transportation modes, is essential to accurately assess health impacts of traffic emissions and to develop effective mitigating measures. We evaluated exposures and inhaled doses of air pollution and assessed factors that contributed to their variability in different travel modes in Barcelona. Black carbon (BC), ultrafine particles (UFP), carbon monoxide (CO), fine particle mass (PM2.5) and carbon dioxide (CO2) were measured and compared across walk, bike, bus, and car modes for a total of 172 trips made on two different round trip routes. On average, the car mode experienced highest concentrations for all contaminants. In pairwise t-tests between concurrent mode runs, statistically significant differences were found for cars compared to walking and biking. Car-to-walk or car-to-bike concentration ratios ranged from 1.3 for CO2 to 25 for CO and were 2–3 for PM2.5, BC, and UFP. In multivariate analyses, travel mode explained the greatest variability in travel exposures, from 8% for PM2.5 to 70% for CO. Different modal patterns emerged when estimating daily inhaled dose, with active commuters'' two to three times greater total inhalation volume during travel producing about equal UFP and BC daily inhaled doses to car commuters and 33–50% higher UFP and BC doses compared to bus commuters. These findings, however, are specific to the bike and pedestrian lanes in this study being immediately adjacent to the roadways measured. Dedicated bike or pedestrian routes away from traffic would lead to lower active travel doses. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The increasing applications of low-cost air sensors promises more convenient and cost-effective systems for air monitoring in many places and under many conditions. However, the data quality from such systems has not been fully characterized and may not meet user expectations in research and regulatory uses, or for use in citizen science. In our study, electrochemical sensors (Alphasense B4 series) for carbon monoxide (CO), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and oxidants (Ox) were evaluated under controlled laboratory conditions to identify the influencing factors and quantify their relation with sensor outputs. Based on the laboratory tests, we developed different correction methods to compensate for the impact of ambient conditions. Further, the sensors were assembled into a monitoring system and tested in ambient conditions in Hong Kong side-by-side with regulatory reference monitors, and data from these tests were used to evaluate the performance of the models, to refine them, and validate their applicability in variable ambient conditions in the field. The more comprehensive correction models demonstrated enhanced performance when compared with uncorrected data. One over-arching observation of this study is that the low-cost sensors may promise excellent sensitivity and performance, but it is essential for users to understand and account for several key factors that may strongly affect the nature of sensor data. In this paper, we also evaluated factors of multi-month stability, temperature, and humidity, and considered the interaction of oxidant gases NO2 and ozone on a newly introduced oxidant sensor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Few studies have used spatially resolved ambient particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of <10 µm (PM10) to examine the impact of PM10 on ischemic heart disease (IHD) mortality in China. The aim of our study is to evaluate the short-term effects of PM10 concentrations on IHD mortality by means of spatiotemporal analysis approach. Methods We collected daily data on air pollution, weather conditions and IHD mortality in Beijing, China during 2008 and 2009. Ordinary kriging (OK) was used to interpolate daily PM10 concentrations at the centroid of 287 township-level areas based on 27 monitoring sites covering the whole city. A generalized additive mixed model was used to estimate quantitatively the impact of spatially resolved PM10 on the IHD mortality. The co-effects of the seasons, gender and age were studied in a stratified analysis. Generalized additive model was used to evaluate the effects of averaged PM10 concentration as well. Results The averaged spatially resolved PM10 concentration at 287 township-level areas was 120.3 ± 78.1 µg/m³. Ambient PM10 concentration was associated with IHD mortality in spatiotemporal analysis and the strongest effects were identified for the 2-day average. A 10 µg/m³ increase in PM10 was associated with an increase of 0.33% (95% confidence intervals: 0.13%, 0.52%) in daily IHD mortality. The effect estimates using spatially resolved PM10 were larger than that using averaged PM10. The seasonal stratification analysis showed that PM10 had the statistically stronger effects on IHD mortality in summer than that in the other seasons. Males and older people demonstrated the larger response to PM10 exposure. Conclusions Our results suggest that short-term exposure to particulate air pollution is associated with increased IHD mortality. Spatial variation should be considered for assessing the impacts of particulate air pollution on mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Traffic restrictions are an unpopular tool to mitigate urban air pollution, and a measurable improvement in air quality is needed to demonstrate the effectiveness of this measure. Previous attempts failed to detect measurable reductions of PM mass pollution within the areas subject to traffic restriction. However black carbon, which is emitted primarily by traffic sources, could be a PM metric more suitable than PM mass to demonstrate pollutant reductions. In this study we report the results of a black carbon monitoring campaign carried out in Milan, Italy, with the aim to detect - and demonstrate more suitably than PM mass - differences in local urban air quality among three zones located very closely with different traffic intensity. The study was carried out in three different days by measuring simultaneously black carbon and PM mass concentrations with fixed monitoring stations located in three main radial roads connecting the outskirts to the city center, each with three segments: 1) an outer one, with no traffic restrictions 2) an intermediate one, subject to the congestion traffic charge called “Ecopass”, where a ticket is required to enter for cars equipped with engines prior to Euro 4 standard; 3) the pedestrian zone (no cars admitted) of Duomo Square in the city center, where each of the three main roads ends. The results demonstrated a sharply declining gradient in black carbon levels from the outer zone, without traffic restrictions, to the more central areas, for all of the three radial main roads. The differences in mean black carbon levels in the same day in the different traffic scheme locations were highly significant for each comparison. In contrast to the Black carbon results, mean PM10, PM2.5, PM1 concentrations did not show significant differences among the different traffic zones on the different campaign days. The ratio of black carbon to PM10 decreased by 47% and 62% in the Ecopass zone and in the pedestrian zone, respectively, as compared to the no-restriction zone. To the best of our knowledge this is the first study showing that within-city proximal areas with different traffic intensity are associated with different black carbon levels. These data suggest that black carbon is a highly relevant metric of traffic pollution and should be taken into consideration in demonstrating the effectiveness of air quality mitigation measures. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]