Primary and secondary sources of ambient formaldehyde in the Yangtze River Delta based on OMPS observation.

Formaldehyde (HCHO) in the ambient air not only causes cancer but also is an ideal indicator for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which are major precursors of ozone (O₃) and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) near the surface. It is meaningful to differentiate between direct emission and secondary formation for HCHO pollution control and sensitivity study of O₃ production. However, the understanding of the sources of HCHO is still poor in China, due to limited measurements of HCHO in the field, both spatially and temporally. In this study, tropospheric HCHO vertical column densities (VCDs) in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), East China where HCHO pollution is serious were retrieved from Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) onboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi-NPP) satellite from 2014 to 2017, and kept good agreement with the tropospheric HCHO columns measured by ground-based high resolution Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTS) with the correlation coefficient (R) of 0.78. Based on this, the cancer risk was estimated nationwide and in the YRD region. At least, 7840 people in the YRD region would develop cancer in their lives due to outdoor HCHO exposure, which occupied 23.4% of total national cancer risk. Besides, the contributions of primary and secondary sources were apportioned, combining with primary and secondary tracers from surface observation. Overall, HCHO from secondary formation contributed most to ambient HCHO and can be regarded as the indication of the VOCs reactivity in Hangzhou and urban areas of Nanjing and Shanghai from 2015 to 2017, due to strong correlation between total HCHO and secondary HCHO. At industrial sites in Nanjing, primary emission influenced most to ambient HCHO in 2015 and showed an obvious decreasing trend. Seasonally, HCHO from secondary formation reached the maximum in summer and minimum in winter. In the spring, summer, and autumn, secondary formation played a curial effect on variation of ambient HCHO in urban regions of Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai; while in the winter the contribution from secondary formation became less significant. The understanding of the variation of the primary and secondary contributions to ambient HCHO is in favor for a better understanding the role of HCHO in atmospheric chemistry and formulating effective control measures to decrease HCHO pollution and cancer risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]