Dataset Information

Comparison between Spatially Resolved Airborne Flux Measurements and Emission Inventories of Volatile Organic Compounds in Los Angeles.

ABSTRACT: Los Angeles is a major hotspot for ozone and particulate matter air pollution in the United States. Ozone and PM_2.5 in this region have not improved substantially for the past decade, despite a reduction in vehicular emissions of their precursors, NO_x and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). This reduction in "traditional" sources has made the current emission mixture of air pollutant precursors more uncertain. To map and quantify emissions of a wide range of VOCs in this urban area, we performed airborne eddy covariance measurements with wavelet analysis. VOC fluxes measured include tracers for source categories, such as traffic, vegetation, and volatile chemical products (VCPs). Mass fluxes were dominated by oxygenated VOCs, with ethanol contributing ∼29% of the total. In terms of OH reactivity and aerosol formation potential, terpenoids contributed more than half. Observed fluxes were compared with two commonly used emission inventories: the California Air Resources Board inventory and the combination of the Biogenic Emission Inventory System with the Fuel-based Inventory of Vehicle Emissions combined with Volatile Chemical Products (FIVE-VCP). The comparison shows mismatches regarding the amount, spatial distribution, and weekend effects of observed VOC emissions with the inventories. The agreement was best for typical transportation related VOCs, while discrepancies were larger for biogenic and VCP-related VOCs.

SUBMITTER: Pfannerstill EY

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10586371 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Comparison between Spatially Resolved Airborne Flux Measurements and Emission Inventories of Volatile Organic Compounds in Los Angeles.

Pfannerstill Eva Y EY Arata Caleb C Zhu Qindan Q Schulze Benjamin C BC Woods Roy R Harkins Colin C Schwantes Rebecca H RH McDonald Brian C BC Seinfeld John H JH Bucholtz Anthony A Cohen Ronald C RC Goldstein Allen H AH

Environmental science & technology 20231004 41

Los Angeles is a major hotspot for ozone and particulate matter air pollution in the United States. Ozone and PM2.5 in this region have not improved substantially for the past decade, despite a reduction in vehicular emissions of their precursors, NOx and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). This reduction in "traditional" sources has made the current emission mixture of air pollutant precursors more uncertain. To map and quantify emissions of a wide range of VOCs in t ...[more]

PMID: 37791848

Similar Datasets

Project description:UnlabelledThe role of human occupancy as a source of indoor biological aerosols is poorly understood. Size-resolved concentrations of total and biological particles in indoor air were quantified in a classroom under occupied and vacant conditions. Per-occupant emission rates were estimated through a mass-balance modeling approach, and the microbial diversity of indoor and outdoor air during occupancy was determined via rDNA gene sequence analysis. Significant increases of total particle mass and bacterial genome concentrations were observed during the occupied period compared to the vacant case. These increases varied in magnitude with the particle size and ranged from 3 to 68 times for total mass, 12-2700 times for bacterial genomes, and 1.5-5.2 times for fungal genomes. Emission rates per person-hour because of occupancy were 31 mg, 37 × 10(6) genome copies, and 7.3 × 10(6) genome copies for total particle mass, bacteria, and fungi, respectively. Of the bacterial emissions, ?18% are from taxa that are closely associated with the human skin microbiome. This analysis provides size-resolved, per person-hour emission rates for these biological particles and illustrates the extent to which being in an occupied room results in exposure to bacteria that are associated with previous or current human occupants.Practical implicationsPresented here are the first size-resolved, per person emission rate estimates of bacterial and fungal genomes for a common occupied indoor space. The marked differences observed between total particle and bacterial size distributions suggest that size-dependent aerosol models that use total particles as a surrogate for microbial particles incorrectly assess the fate of and human exposure to airborne bacteria. The strong signal of human microbiota in airborne particulate matter in an occupied setting demonstrates that the aerosol route can be a source of exposure to microorganisms emitted from the skin, hair, nostrils, and mouths of other occupants.

Dataset Information

Comparison between Spatially Resolved Airborne Flux Measurements and Emission Inventories of Volatile Organic Compounds in Los Angeles.

Publications

Comparison between Spatially Resolved Airborne Flux Measurements and Emission Inventories of Volatile Organic Compounds in Los Angeles.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets