Road Dust Emission Sources and Assessment of Street Washing Effect

Abstract

Although previous studies report on the effect of street washing on ambient particulate matter levels, there is a lack of studies investigating the results of street washing on the emission strength of road dust. A sampling campaign was conducted in Madrid urban area during July 2009 where road dust samples were collected in two sites, namely Reference site (where the road surface was not washed) and Pelayo site (where street washing was performed daily during night). Following the chemical characterization of the road dust particles the emission sources were resolved by means of Positive Matrix Factorization, PMF (Multilinear Engine scripting) and the mass contribution of each source was calculated for the two sites. Mineral dust, brake wear, tire wear, carbonaceous emissions and construction dust were the main sources of road dust with mineral and construction dust being the major contributors to inhalable road dust load. To evaluate the effectiveness of street washing on the emission sources, the sources mass contributions between the two sites were compared. Although brake wear and tire wear had lower concentrations at the site where street washing was performed, these mass differences were not statistically significant and the temporal variation did not show the expected build-up after dust removal. It was concluded that the washing activities resulted merely in a road dust moistening, without effective removal and that mobilization of particles took place in a few hours between washing and sampling. The results also indicated that it is worth paying attention to the dust dispersed from the construction sites as they affect the emission strength in nearby streets.

First long-term and near real-time measurement of trace elements in China's urban atmosphere: temporal variability, source apportionment and precipitation effect

“…Water spray (from sprinkler on road or atop a tall building) to simulate natural types of precipitation has been proposed as an important abatement strategy to facilitate the reduction of ambient PM concentrations (including trace elements) in urban China (Liu et al, 2014;Yu, 2014). However, several field measurements revealed that water spray activities did not influence the PM mass levels (e.g., Karanasiou et al, 2012;Karanasiou, 2014). Taking advantage of our simultaneous and hourly record of the precipitation amount (up to 37 mm) and the elemental concentration, here we evaluate the effects of precipitation on the mitigation of PM 2.5 trace elements.…”

Fingerprinting and tracing the sources of soils and sediments: Earth and ocean science, geoarchaeological, forensic, and human health applications

“…Typically, airborne particles are collected using specialised samplers with filters. Some studies in the urban environment have determined sources of road-deposited sediment (RDS) which is itself a major source of PM10 and PM2.5 and an important contributor to the fine-grained sediment load of urban rivers (Owens et al, 2011;Karanasiou et al, 2014).…”

Deposition and Impact of Urban Atmospheric Dust on Two Medicinal Plants during Different Seasons in NCR Delhi

“…The major sources of dust pollution include suspension of soil, agriculture related activities, road dust, vehicular exhaust, power plants, construction activities, brick kilns and cement factories etc. (Karanasiou et al, 2014;Upadhyay et al, 2015). In addition, transboundary and long range transport also contributes a significant amount of atmospheric dust in the south Asian region (Begum et al, 2011).…”