Abstract
Real-world particulate matter, organic carbon, and elemental carbon (OC and EC) emission measurements were measured for different cultural and ritual burning practices. These were (g/kg): 11.36 (OC), 0.27 (EC) and 31.04 (RPM) for Marriage Events; 27.04 (OC), 0.18 (EC) and 123.82 (RPM) for Muslim Holy Shrines; 25.99 (OC), 0.85 (EC) and 47.93 (RPM) for Buddhist Temples; and 3.47 (OC), 7.96 (EC) and 20.13 (RPM) for Hindu Temples. When projected to reasonable levels of such activities throughout India, the total annual emissions would be 72.38 Gg/yr, comparable to those from transport (165 Gg/yr), power plants (19 Gg/yr), agricultural waste burning (428 Gg/yr) and forest and savannah burning (176 Gg/yr).
Highlights
“Brown Clouds” are caused by a mixture primary and secondary particulate matter (PM) generated from engine exhaust, biomass burning, and industrial processes (Smith et al, 1983; Reiner et al, 2001; Streets et al, 2003; Yan et al, 2006; Witham and Manning, 2007)
Atmospheric elemental carbon (EC) and organic carbon (OC) are the major primary PM constituents emitted by inefficient combustion of fossil fuels and biomass (USEPA, 2012; UNEP and NOAA, 2003)
EC EFs in the present study have shown exceptionally high levels compared to diesel fuel use (0.84 g/kg); gasoline use (0.19–5.4 g/kg); kerosene use (0.9 g/kg) and LPG use (0.2 g/kg) in transport and residential sectors (Bond et al, 2004)
Summary
“Brown Clouds” are caused by a mixture primary and secondary particulate matter (PM) generated from engine exhaust, biomass burning, and industrial processes (Smith et al, 1983; Reiner et al, 2001; Streets et al, 2003; Yan et al, 2006; Witham and Manning, 2007). EC/OC soot scatters solar radiation back into space, which may counteract the warming effect. In a Hindu marriage, the couple transits seven circuits around a Holy Fire fuelled by the materials described elsewhere (Dewangan et al, 2013, 2014). Besides these ritual activities, different religion oriented worship places (Hindu Temples, Muslim Holy Shrines and Buddhist Temples) are paid spiritual homage using flaming episodes by igniting different kinds of bio- and synthetic materials described elsewhere (Dewangan et al, 2013, 2014). This study evaluates real-world emission conditions in contrast to other studies that examined emissions from specific types of incense (Lee and Wang, 2004; See and Balasubramanian, 2011) or biomass material
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