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In densely populated areas, traffic is a significant source of atmospheric aerosol particles. Owing to their small size and complicated chemical and physical characteristics, atmospheric particles resulting from traffic emissions pose a significant risk to human health and also contribute to anthropogenic forcing of climate. Previous research has established that vehicles directly emit primary aerosol particles and also contribute to secondary aerosol particle formation by emitting aerosol precursors. Here, we extend the urban atmospheric aerosol characterization to cover nanocluster aerosol (NCA) particles and show that a major fraction of particles emitted by road transportation are in a previously unmeasured size range of 1.3-3.0 nm. For instance, in a semiurban roadside environment, the NCA represented 20-54% of the total particle concentration in ambient air. The observed NCA concentrations varied significantly depending on the traffic rate and wind direction. The emission factors of NCA for traffic were 2.4·10 15 (kg fuel ) −1 in a roadside environment, 2.6·10 15 (kg fuel ) −1 in a street canyon, and 2.9·10 15 (kg fuel ) −1 in an on-road study throughout Europe. Interestingly, these emissions were not associated with all vehicles. In engine laboratory experiments, the emission factor of exhaust NCA varied from a relatively low value of 1.6·10 12 (kg fuel ) −1 to a high value of 4.3·10 15 (kg fuel ) −1 . These NCA emissions directly affect particle concentrations and human exposure to nanosized aerosol in urban areas, and potentially may act as nanosized condensation nuclei for the condensation of atmospheric low-volatile organic compounds.nanocluster aerosol | atmospheric aerosol | combustion-derived nanoparticles | air pollution | traffic emission D etailed characterization of aerosol sources is required to understand climate impacts and health effects of atmospheric aerosols, as well as to develop technologies and policies capable of mitigating air pollution in urbanized areas. In densely populated areas, one of the most significant source of particles is traffic (1, 2). Owing to their small size and complicated chemical and physical characteristics (3-6), atmospheric particles resulting from traffic emissions pose a significant risk to human health (7-12), and also contribute to anthropogenic forcing of climate (13,14). Previous research on vehicular emissions has demonstrated the presence of soot and ash (3, 15) and solid sub-10-nm core particles (4-6) in primary emissions from vehicles and engines and their variation, depending on vehicle technologies (4, 6), the properties of fuels and lubricant oils (15, 16), and driving conditions (15-17). In addition to particles, exhaust typically contains species that reside in the gaseous phase in the undiluted high-temperature exhaust (5, 18, 19) but condense or even nucleate to the particle phase immediately after the exhaust is released to the atmosphere. Here, we term such aerosols delayed primary aerosols, because particle precursors exist already in the u...

Abstract. Four measurement campaigns were performed in two different environments -inside the harbour areas in the city centre of Helsinki, and along the narrow shipping channel near the city of Turku, Finland -using a mobile laboratory van during winter and summer conditions in 2010-2011. The characteristics of gaseous (CO, CO 2 , SO 2 , NO, NO 2 , NO x ) and particulate (number and volume size distributions as well as PM 2.5 ) emissions for 11 ships regularly operating on the Baltic Sea were studied to determine the emission parameters. The highest particle concentrations were 1.5 × 10 6 and 1.6 × 10 5 cm −3 in Helsinki and Turku, respectively, and the particle number size distributions had two modes. The dominating mode peaked at 20-30 nm, and the accumulation mode at 80-100 nm. The majority of the particle mass was volatile, since after heating the sample to 265 • C, the particle volume of the studied ship decreased by around 70 %. The emission factors for NO x varied in the range of 25-100 g (kg fuel) −1 , for SO 2 in the range of 2.5-17.0 g (kg fuel) −1 , for particle number in the range of (0.32-2.26) × 10 16 # (kg fuel) −1 , and for PM 2.5 between 1.0-4.9 g (kg fuel) −1 . The ships equipped with SCR (selective catalytic reduction) had the lowest NO x emissions, whereas the ships with DWI (direct water injection) and HAMs (humid air motors) had the lowest SO 2 emissions but the highest particulate emissions. For all ships, the averaged fuel sulphur contents (FSCs) were less than 1 % (by mass) but none of them was below 0.1 % which will be the new EU directive starting 1 January 2015 in the SO x emission control areas; this indicates that ships operating on the Baltic Sea will face large challenges.

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Abstract. A mathematical model is presented for the determination of human exposure to ambient air pollution in an urban area; the model is a refined version of a previously developed mathematical model EXPAND (EXposure model for Particulate matter And Nitrogen oxiDes). The model combines predicted concentrations, information on people's activities and location of the population to evaluate the spatial and temporal variation of average exposure of the urban population to ambient air pollution in different microenvironments. The revisions of the modelling system containing the EXPAND model include improvements of the associated urban emission and dispersion modelling system, an improved treatment of the time use of population, and better treatment for the infiltration coefficients from outdoor to indoor air. The revised model version can also be used for estimating intake fractions for various pollutants, source categories and population subgroups. We present numerical results on annual spatial concentration, time activity and population exposures to PM 2.5 in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area and Helsinki for 2008 and 2009, respectively. Approximately 60 % of the total exposure occurred at home, 17 % at work, 4 % in traffic and 19 % in other microenvironments in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. The population exposure originating from the long-range transported background concentrations was responsible for a major fraction, 86 %, of the total exposure in Helsinki. The largest local contributors were vehicular emissions (12 %) and shipping (2 %).

EXPOLIS is a European multicenter (Athens, Basel, Grenoble, Helsinki, Milan, and Prague) air pollution exposure study. It is the first international, population-based, large-scale study, where personal exposures to PM 2.5 aerosol particles (together with volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide) are being monitored. EXPOLIS is performed in six different centers across Europe, the sampled aerosol concentrations vary greatly, and the microenvironmental samples are not collected with the same equipment as the personal samples. Therefore careful equipment selection, methods development and testing, and thorough quality assurance and quality control (QA & QC) procedures are essential for producing reliable and comparable PM 2.5 data. This paper introduces the equipment, the laboratory test results, the pilot results, the standard operating procedures, and the QA & QC procedures of EXPOLIS. Test results show good comparability and repeatability between personal and microenvironmental monitors for PM 2.5 at different concentration levels measured across Europe in EXPOLIS centers.