Insights into chemical composition, abatement mechanisms and regional transport of atmospheric pollutants in the Yangtze River Delta region, China during the COVID-19 outbreak control period

Jia, Haohao; Huo, Juntao; Fu, Qingyan; Duan, Yusen; Lin, Yanfen; Jin, Xin; Hu, Xue; Cheng, Jin

doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2020.115612

Cited by 28 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…2 a, which has implications for environment, health and climate ( Chowdhury et al, 2018 ; Ito et al, 2019 ; von Schneidemesser et al, 2015 ). This observation has been discussed in a few studies (e.g., Huang et al, 2021b ; Jia et al, 2020 ; Le et al, 2020 ). Overall, all these studies highlight that the mitigation of secondary air pollutants such as O 3 , SIA, and SOA in cities will remain a challenge even after implementation of effective policies for reduced emissions of primary air pollutants.…”

Section: Factors Affecting Oaq and Their Impactsmentioning

confidence: 64%

Air quality changes in cities during the COVID-19 lockdown: A critical review

Adam

Tran

Balasubramanian

2021

Atmospheric Research

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In response to the rapid spread of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) within and across countries and the need to protect public health, governments worldwide introduced unprecedented measures such as restricted road and air travel and reduced human mobility in 2020. The curtailment of personal travel and economic activity provided a unique opportunity for researchers to assess the interplay between anthropogenic emissions of primary air pollutants, their physical transport, chemical transformation, ultimate fate and potential health impacts. In general, reductions in the atmospheric levels of outdoor air pollutants such as particulate matter (PM), nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ), carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were observed in many countries during the lockdowns. However, the levels of ozone (O 3 ), a secondary air pollutant linked to asthma and respiratory ailments, and secondary PM were frequently reported to remain unchanged or even increase. An increase in O 3 can enhance the formation of secondary PM 2.5 , especially secondary organic aerosols, through the atmospheric oxidation of VOCs. Given that the gaseous precursors of O 3 (VOCs and NO x ) are also involved in the formation of secondary PM 2.5, an integrated control strategy should focus on reducing the emission of the common precursors for the co-mitigation of PM 2.5 and O 3 with an emphasis on their complex photochemical interactions. Compared to outdoor air quality, comprehensive investigations of indoor air quality (IAQ) are relatively sparse. People spend more than 80% of their time indoors with exposure to air pollutants of both outdoor and indoor origins. Consequently, an integrated assessment of exposure to air pollutants in both outdoor and indoor microenvironments is needed for effective urban air quality management and for mitigation of health risk. To provide further insights into air quality, we provide a critical review of scientific articles, published from January 2020 to December 2020 across the globe. Finally, we discuss policy implications of our review in the context of global air quality improvement.

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Section: Factors Affecting Oaq and Their Impactsmentioning

confidence: 64%

Air quality changes in cities during the COVID-19 lockdown: A critical review

Adam

Tran

Balasubramanian

2021

Atmospheric Research

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“…Notably, the unexpected increase in daily PM 2.5 mainly appeared in the BTH region, yet severe haze pollution was observed over eastern China during the COVID-19 shutdown ( Chang et al, 2020 ; Huang et al, 2021 ; Lv et al, 2020 ; Zhao et al, 2020b ). This high frequency of haze events with high PM 2.5 concentrations during the epidemic was mainly attributed to the higher secondary aerosol fraction of PM 2.5 caused by the unbalanced reduction of gaseous pollutants (NO X , O 3 and VOCs) along with medium-scale regional transportation ( Ghahremanloo et al, 2021 ; Huang et al, 2021 ; Jia et al, 2020 ; Lv et al, 2020 ; Shen et al, 2021 ). The variation in PM 2.5 concentrations over different regions during COVID-19 indicates that heavy industrial emissions are relevant to regional PM 2.5 pollution.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigation of PM2.5 pollution during COVID-19 pandemic in Guangzhou, China

Wen

Yang

Liao

et al. 2022

Journal of Environmental Sciences

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The COVID-19 pandemic has raised awareness about various environmental issues, including PM 2.5 pollution. Here, PM 2.5 pollution during the COVID-19 lockdown was traced and analyzed to clarify the sources and factors influencing PM 2.5 in Guangzhou, with an emphasis on heavy pollution. The lockdown led to large reductions in industrial and traffic emissions, which significantly reduced PM 2.5 concentrations in Guangzhou. Interestingly, the trend of PM 2.5 concentrations was not consistent with traffic and industrial emissions, as minimum concentrations were observed in the fourth period (3/01-3/31, 22.45 μg•m −3 ) of the lockdown. However, the concentrations of other gaseous pollutants, e.g., SO 2 , NO 2 and CO, were correlated with industrial and traffic emissions, and the lowest values were noticed in the second period (1/24-2/03) of the lockdown. Meteorological correlation analysis revealed that the decreased PM 2.5 concentrations during COVID-19 can be mainly attributed to decreased industrial and traffic emissions rather than meteorological conditions. When meteorological factors were included in the PM 2.5 composition and backward trajectory analyses, we found that long-distance transportation and secondary pollution offset the reduction of primary emissions in the second and third stages of the pandemic. Notably, industrial PM 2.5 emissions from western, southern and southeastern Guangzhou play an important role in the formation of heavy pollution events. Our results not only verify the importance of controlling traffic and industrial emissions, but also provide targets for further improvements in PM 2.5 pollution.

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“…, 2020),(Zhang et al, 2020d), United Kingdom:(Higham et al, 2020),(Fu et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020d), Russia:(Fu et al, 2020), Italy:(Fu et al, 2020), France:(Fu et al, 2020),(Zhang et al, 2020d), Spain:(Fu et al, 2020),(Martorell-Marugán et al, 2021),(Zhang et al, 2020d), and Germany:(Zhang et alet al, 2020a;Chen et al, 2020d;Jia et al, 2020b;Liu et al, 2020c;Qiu et al, 2020;Yuan et al, 2021), India:(Chatterjee et al, 2020;Panda et al, 2020), Italy:(Collivignarelli et al, 2020), United Kingdom: (Ropkins and Tate, 2020), Canada: (Adams, 2020), United States:(Xiang et al, 2020), and Brazil:(Nakada and Urban, 2020;Siciliano et al, 2020b) AOD India:(Gautam, 2020b;Ranjan et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020d), China(Diamond and Wood, 2020;Ghahremanloo et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020d;Shen et al, 2021), South Korea, and Japan(Ghahremanloo et al, 2020), North America, and Europe(Zhang et al, 2020d) NMVOCs China:(Ghahremanloo et al, 2020;Jia et al, 2020b;Qiu et al, 2020), South Korea:(Ghahremanloo et al, 2020), Japan:(Ghahremanloo et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020b), India:(Beig et al, 20...…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The global impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns on urban air pollution

Gkatzelis

Gilman

Brown

et al. 2021

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

123

154

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The coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic led to government interventions to limit the spread of the disease which are unprecedented in recent history; for example, stay at home orders led to sudden decreases in atmospheric emissions from the transportation sector. In this review article, the current understanding of the influence of emission reductions on atmospheric pollutant concentrations and air quality is summarized for nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter (PM2.5), ozone (O3), ammonia, sulfur dioxide, black carbon, volatile organic compounds, and carbon monoxide (CO). In the first 7 months following the onset of the pandemic, more than 200 papers were accepted by peer-reviewed journals utilizing observations from ground-based and satellite instruments. Only about one-third of this literature incorporates a specific method for meteorological correction or normalization for comparing data from the lockdown period with prior reference observations despite the importance of doing so on the interpretation of results. We use the government stringency index (SI) as an indicator for the severity of lockdown measures and show how key air pollutants change as the SI increases. The observed decrease of NO2 with increasing SI is in general agreement with emission inventories that account for the lockdown. Other compounds such as O3, PM2.5, and CO are also broadly covered. Due to the importance of atmospheric chemistry on O3 and PM2.5 concentrations, their responses may not be linear with respect to primary pollutants. At most sites, we found O3 increased, whereas PM2.5 decreased slightly, with increasing SI. Changes of other compounds are found to be understudied. We highlight future research needs for utilizing the emerging data sets as a preview of a future state of the atmosphere in a world with targeted permanent reductions of emissions. Finally, we emphasize the need to account for the effects of meteorology, emission trends, and atmospheric chemistry when determining the lockdown effects on pollutant concentrations.

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Insights into chemical composition, abatement mechanisms and regional transport of atmospheric pollutants in the Yangtze River Delta region, China during the COVID-19 outbreak control period

Cited by 28 publications

References 49 publications

Air quality changes in cities during the COVID-19 lockdown: A critical review

Air quality changes in cities during the COVID-19 lockdown: A critical review

Investigation of PM2.5 pollution during COVID-19 pandemic in Guangzhou, China

The global impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns on urban air pollution

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