Nanoparticle emissions from 11 non-vehicle exhaust sources – A review

The exposure to coarse, fine and ultrafine particle emissions from concrete mixing, drilling and cutting activities

“…those below ≤10, ≤2.5, ≤1 µm in aerodynamic diameter, respectively) based on the PMCs [7]. Vehicle emissions are well established as a significant source of PNCs [8,9] whilst road dust is a major source of PMCs [10]. At the same time, many building activities associated with the creation and management of urban infrastructure also emit particles across the range of PM10 and PM2.5 [11].…”

“…In addition, there remain significant uncertainties concerning exposure risk because the particles characteristics from construction sources may be different from other, more established sources such as vehicle exhaust [28][29][30][31] and non-vehicle exhaust sources [9, 32]. None of the studies to date have presented coarse, fine and ultrafine particles emissions and associated exposure to on-site workers from either of the mixing, drilling or cutting activities (see Table 1), which is the focus of this study.…”

“…There have been a number of studies of PMCs of ambient PM10 in urban areas, but less work has focused on the PM2.5 and PM1 fractions arising from building activities [14] with even less information relating to particles below 100 nm [9]. Whilst research has been undertaken into the effects of ultrafine particles on the environment and health [15], there is currently no legal regulation, or guidelines, for controlling the public exposure to airborne PNCs within the urban environment, including construction sites [7].…”

“…[5][6][7][8][9][10], fine (PM2.5), very fine (PM1) and ultrafine particles. The manufacture of fresh concrete typically involves the mixing of coarse and fine aggregates with cement, water and admixtures in a rotating drum mixer generating considerable air-borne dust [7].…”

“…In addition, there remain significant uncertainties concerning exposure risk because the particles characteristics from construction sources may be different from other, more established sources such as vehicle exhaust [28][29][30][31] and non-vehicle exhaust sources [9, 32]. None of the studies to date have presented coarse, fine and ultrafine particles emissions and associated exposure to on-site workers from either of the mixing, drilling or cutting activities (see Table 1), which is the focus of this study.Taking advantage of research gaps and in continuation of our previous efforts [7,9, 19, 33] this work investigates the release of particles in the 5-10,000 nm range from three (simulated) construction activities (concrete mixing, drilling and cutting) carried out under controlled conditions in indoor laboratory environment. The objectives were to analyse the size distributions and proportions of both particle number and mass concentrations in the studied size range, compute emission factors (EFs) and exposure to on-site workers.…”