AAAR 35th Annual Conference October 17 - October 21, 2016 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Using the Association with Nitrogen Dioxide to Apportion the Primary and Secondary Sources of Airborne Nitrated Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (NPAHs)
YAN LIN, Xinghua Qiu, Yifang Zhu, University of California Los Angeles
Abstract Number: 17 Working Group: Source Apportionment
Abstract Nitrated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (NPAHs) are strong environmental mutagens and carcinogens originating from both primary emissions and secondary reactions in the atmosphere. The sources and the toxicity of different NPAH species could vary greatly; therefore a specie-specific source apportionment is essential to evaluate their health risks and to formulate controlling regulations. However, few studies have reported source apportionment of NPAHs species to date. In this study, we developed an easy-to-perform method for the apportionment of primary versus secondary sources of airborne NPAHs based on the relationship between NPAHs and NO$_2. After log-transformation of both NPAHs and NO$_2 concentrations, a slope of beta between these two variables was obtained by the linear regression. When beta is significantly smaller than 1, it indicates primary emissions while beta significantly greater than 1 suggests secondary formation. We have validated this method with data previously collected in Beijing. A good correlation, with R value of 0.57, was observed between results produced by this new method and by Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF). The correlation could be further improved (R=0.71) if the gas/particle partition of NPAHs is taken into consideration. This developed method enables the source apportionment for individual NPAHs species and could be used to validate the results of other receptor models.