Air pollution affects billions of people worldwide, yet ambient pollution measurements are limited for much of the world. Urban air pollution concentrations vary sharply over short distances (≪1 km) owing to unevenly distributed emission sources, dilution, and physicochemical transformations. Accordingly, even where present, conventional fixed-site pollution monitoring methods lack the spatial resolution needed to characterize heterogeneous human exposures and localized pollution hotspots. Here, we demonstrate a measurement approach to reveal urban air pollution patterns at 4-5 orders of magnitude greater spatial precision than possible with current central-site ambient monitoring. We equipped Google Street View vehicles with a fast-response pollution measurement platform and repeatedly sampled every street in a 30-km area of Oakland, CA, developing the largest urban air quality data set of its type. Resulting maps of annual daytime NO, NO, and black carbon at 30 m-scale reveal stable, persistent pollution patterns with surprisingly sharp small-scale variability attributable to local sources, up to 5-8× within individual city blocks. Since local variation in air quality profoundly impacts public health and environmental equity, our results have important implications for how air pollution is measured and managed. If validated elsewhere, this readily scalable measurement approach could address major air quality data gaps worldwide.

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Continuous, size resolved particle measurements were performed in two houses in order to determine size-dependent particle penetration into and deposition in the indoor environment. The experiments consisted of three parts: (1) measurement of the particle loss rate following artificial elevation of indoor particle concentrations, (2) rapid reduction in particle concentration through induced ventilation by pressurization of the houses with HEPA-filtered air, and (3) measurement of the particle concentration rebound after house pressurization stopped. During the particle concentration decay period, when indoor concentrations are very high, losses due to deposition are large compared to gains due to particle infiltration. During the concentration rebound period, the opposite is true. The large variation in indoor concentration allows the effects of penetration and deposition losses to be separated by the transient, two-parameter model we employed to analyze the data. For the two houses studied, we found that as particles increased in diameter from 0.1 to 10 µm, penetration factors ranged from ∼1 to 0.3 and deposition loss rates ranged from 0.1 and 5 h −1 . The decline in penetration factor with increasing particle size was less pronounced in the house with the larger normalized leakage area.

Recent studies associate particulate air pollution with adverse health effects; however, the exposure to indoor particles of outdoor origin is not well characterized, particularly for individual chemical species. We conducted a field study in an unoccupied, single-story residence in Clovis, California to provide data and analyses to address issues important for assessing exposure. We used real-time particle monitors both outdoors and indoors to quantify PM-2.5 nitrate, sulfate, and carbon. The results show that measured indoor ammonium nitrate concentrations were significantly lower than would be expected based solely on penetration and deposition losses. The additional reduction can be attributed to the transformation indoors of ammonium nitrate into ammonia and nitric acid gases, which are subsequently lost by deposition and sorption to indoor surfaces. A mass balance model that accounts for the kinetics of ammonium nitrate evaporation was able to reproduce measured indoor ammonium nitrate and nitric acid concentrations, resulting in a fitted value of the deposition velocity for nitric acid of 0.56 cm s -1 . The results indicate that indoor exposure to outdoor ammonium nitrate in Central Valley of California are small, and suggest that exposure assessments based on total particle mass measured outdoors may obscure the actual causal relationships for indoor exposure to particles of outdoor origin.

Ozone-driven chemistry is a major source of indoor secondary pollutants of health concern. This study investigates secondary air pollutants formed from reactions between constituents of household products and ozone. Gas-phase product emissions were introduced along with ozone at constant rates into a 198-L Teflon-lined reaction chamber. Gas-phase concentrations of reactive terpenoids and oxidation products were measured. Formaldehyde was a predominant oxidation byproduct for the three studied products, with yields under most conditions of 20-30% with respect to ozone consumed. Acetaldehyde, acetone, glycolaldehyde, formic acid and acetic acid were each also detected for two or three of the products. Immediately upon mixing of reactants, a scanning mobility particle sizer detected particle nucleation events that were followed by a significant degree of ultrafine particle growth. The production of * corresponding author E-mail: HDestaillats@lbl.gov H Destaillats et al.To be submitted to Environmental Science & Technology secondary gaseous pollutants and particles depended primarily on the ozone level and was influenced by other parameters such as the air-exchange rate. Hydroxyl radical concentrations in the range 0.04-200 × 10 5 molecules cm -3 were measured. OH concentrations were observed to vary strongly with residual ozone level in the chamber, which was in the range 1 -25 ppb, as is consistent with expectations from a simplified kinetic model. In a separate test, we exposed the dry residue of two products to ozone in the chamber and observed the formation of gas-phase and particle-phase secondary oxidation products.

( ) ABSTRACT. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy LIBS was evaluated as a means for quantitative analysis of the size, mass, and composition of individual micron-to submicron-sized aerosol particles over a range of well-characterized experimental conditions. Conditional data analysis was used to identify LIBS spectra that correspond to discrete aerosol particles under low aerosol particle loadings. The size distributions of monodisperse particle source ows were measured us ing the LIBS technique for calcium-and magnesium-based aerosols. The resulting size distributions were in good agreement with independently measured size distribution data. A lower size detection limit of 175 nm was determined for the calcium-and magnesium-based particles, which corresponds to a detectable mass of approximately 3 femtograms. In addition, the accuracy of the LIBS technique for the interference-free analysis of different particle types was veri ed us ing a binary aerosol system of calcium-based and chromium particles.