AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Human Particulate Matter Exposure Implications from Regional Pollutant Transport
Fatema Parvez, Carmen Lamancusa, KRISTINA WAGSTROM, University of Connecticut
Abstract Number: 411 Working Group: Remote and Regional Atmospheric Aerosols
Abstract The intake fraction (iF) from a variety of sources provides a means to determine the relative impact between emissions sources. For instance, emissions from an elevated stack will likely have a lower iF than ground-level emissions. In this study, we use two different approaches to quantify the impacts of exposure from pollutant transport in the continental United States. First, we estimate the ground level concentration contributions and iF for different height point source emissions. Next, we use the same metrics to quantify exposure variation with distance from different source regions.
We employ a regional chemical transport model, CAMx, to extend this analysis over an entire region. We use the Particulate Matter Source Apportionment Technology (PSAT), available in CAMx, to specifically track the contributions from each group of point sources (differentiated by height) and source regions within the domain. This allows us to more thoroughly estimate the total potential exposure because we account for the transport and transformation of pollutants on regional scales. In addition to estimating iF of primary pollutants, we also estimate the iF for secondary pollutants. The iF for secondary pollutants is calculated based on the commonality between the precursor and product. For instance, the iF of SO$_2 and particulate sulfate are calculated as the iF of the sulfur atom – treating SO$_2-sulfate as a complete system.
We have found that when investigating iF variation among different height point sources, it is important to consider population distributions. We have used an approach to decouple the population distribution and pollutant dispersion to consider the impacts of each on iF from point sources. We have also found that the majority of pollution emitted in urban areas is inhaled within the same urban area and that, among particulate matter species, sulfate has the highest percent of intake occurring outside the urban area.