AAAR 36th Annual Conference October 16 - October 20, 2017 Raleigh Convention Center Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Abstract View
High Spatial Resolution of Sources, Mixing State and Exposure of Particulate Matter Using Single Particle Mass Spectrometry
QING YE, Peishi Gu, Zhongju Li, Ellis Shipley Robinson, Joshua Apte, Ryan Sullivan, Allen Robinson, Albert A. Presto, Neil Donahue, Carnegie Mellon University
Abstract Number: 337 Working Group: Aerosol Exposure
Abstract Large-scale epidemiological research is traditionally based on data from a limited number of monitoring sites that are usually in rural or urban background locations. Although studies of atmospheric pollutants in urban areas have been reported in the literature, intra-city levels of fine particulate matter with high spatial resolution are rare. We conducted extensive mobile measurements of atmospheric particulate matter with a state-of-the-art single particle mass spectrometer in Pittsburgh, PA. The sampling sites span various land use types including tunnels, highways, parks, suburban residential neighborhoods and commercial areas. We focus on emissions from traffic and restaurant cooking to investigate the relationship between emissions and exposure. We use the mass spectra of individual sampled particles to identify the sources and mixing state of the particles. We investigate the correlation of traffic/restaurant density and the abundance of their associated particles types using the mobile sampling data. We then extrapolate and apply the correlations to the entire city coupled with demographic data to understand contribution of various emission sources to people's exposure on the city-level. Our preliminary results shows that while background particles are relatively spatially homogeneous, there are large spatial gradients and hot spots associated with particles emitted from traffic and restaurant cookings. Some of these hot spots are also highly populous. Roughly a quarter to a third of the population in the city are exposed to high levels of fresh and externally mixed particles. This work provides us with unique opportunities to systematically understand how near-source emissions are driving neighborhood-level exposure.