Comparing Multipollutant Emissions-Based Mobile Source Indicators to Other Single Pollutant and Multipollutant Indicators in Different Urban Areas

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Michelle M. Oakes²  Lisa K. Baxter¹  Rachelle M. Duvall¹  Meagan Madden²  Mingjie Xie⁴  Michael P. Hannigan⁴  Jennifer L. Peel³  Jorge E. Pachon⁵  Siv Balachandran⁶  Armistead Russell⁶  Thomas C. Long² 

[1] National Exposure Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 2711, USA; E-Mails:;National Center for Environmental Assessment, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, USA; E-Mails:;Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA; E-Mail:;Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA; E-Mails:;Program of Environmental Engineering, Universidad de La Salle, Bogota, CO 111711, USA; E-Mail:;Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA; E-Mails:

关键词: multipollutant;    air pollution;    exposure metrics;    source apportionment;    mobile sources;    emissions-based indicators;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijerph111111727

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

A variety of single pollutant and multipollutant metrics can be used to represent exposure to traffic pollutant mixtures and evaluate their health effects. Integrated mobile source indicators (IMSIs) that combine air quality concentration and emissions data have recently been developed and evaluated using data from Atlanta, Georgia. IMSIs were found to track trends in traffic-related pollutants and have similar or stronger associations with health outcomes. In the current work, we apply IMSIs for gasoline, diesel and total (gasoline + diesel) vehicles to two other cities (Denver, Colorado and Houston, Texas) with different emissions profiles as well as to a different dataset from Atlanta. We compare spatial and temporal variability of IMSIs to single-pollutant indicators (carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NO_x) and elemental carbon (EC)) and multipollutant source apportionment factors produced by Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF). Across cities, PMF-derived and IMSI gasoline metrics were most strongly correlated with CO (r = 0.31–0.98), while multipollutant diesel metrics were most strongly correlated with EC (r = 0.80–0.98). NO_x correlations with PMF factors varied across cities (r = 0.29–0.67), while correlations with IMSIs were relatively consistent (r = 0.61–0.94). In general, single-pollutant metrics were more correlated with IMSIs (r = 0.58–0.98) than with PMF-derived factors (r = 0.07–0.99). A spatial analysis indicated that IMSIs were more strongly correlated (r > 0.7) between two sites in each city than single pollutant and PMF factors. These findings provide confidence that IMSIs provide a transferable, simple approach to estimate mobile source air pollution in cities with differing topography and source profiles using readily available data.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.