AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Woodsmoke Pollution in Southern Chile
HECTOR JORQUERA, Francisco Barraza, Johanna Heyer, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Abstract Number: 430 Working Group: Urban Aerosols
Abstract In Southern Chile climate conditions and market fuel prices promote generalized residential wood burning for heating and cooking. However most households have poor thermal insulation and use inefficient stoves so wood smoke is a widespread problem. In this work we consider Temuco (38°44’ S, 72°35’ W), one of most polluted cities in Chile. In 2012 there were 125 exceedances of the 24h Ambient Chilean Standard for PM2.5, the worst being 291 μg/m3; the annual average PM2.5 concentration was 59 μg/m3, also exceeding the Chilean Annual Ambient Standard.
We report here the results of indoor PM2.5 measurements carried out in 60 households in Temuco during winter 2014. A pair of TAS samplers (Airmetrics, Eugene, OR, USA, 5 L/min) was placed inside each household studied and an additional pair of samplers (Partisol 2000i Thermo Scientific, USA, 16.67 L/min) was placed at a fixed outdoor location for measuring trace elements and elemental and organic carbon in Teflon and quartz filters, respectively. Outdoor PM2.5 samples were highly correlated with an official PM2.5 ambient monitor (beta attenuation, Model MP101M, Environnement, France) located a few blocks away. Indoor PM2.5 concentrations closely follow the outdoor ones meaning households infiltration factors are high; the worst values were recorded when smokers were present, with an I/O PM2.5 ratio near 2.0.
Chemical analysis of outdoor samples show that wood smoke is the dominant PM2.5 source, which is also confirmed by modeling PM2.5 dispersion in the city using CALPUFF. Current regulations and contingency measures aimed at curbing down wood smoke are also discussed.