Abstract
Inhalable particles (PM10) in Lahore, Pakistan, during a high polluting spring episode in 2006 were collected and analyzed for the ambient concentrations of organic and element carbon (OC, EC) and more than one hundred organic species. High PM10 mass concentrations, averaging 459 µg/m 3 , were characterized by extremely high concentrations of mobile source related organic compounds including hopanes and PAHs. Source apportionment of PM10 OC, EC and mass was performed using molecular marker based CMB receptor model. Results showed that traffic pollution, including exhaust from gasoline or diesel powered vehicles, was the predominate source of carbonaceous aerosols. Gasoline powered vehicles plus diesel exhausts contribute 47.5%, 88.3% and 15.4% of measured inhalable particulate OC, EC and mass, respectively. Though the contribution is not quantitatively calculated in this study, dust was estimated as another important source of PM10, which is a significant contributor to coarse phase pollutions. Even compared to other mega-cities like Beijing, Mexico City, and Los Angeles, the motor vehicle associated pollution in Lahore was found to be very large. Other sources of carbonaceous aerosols were quantified including wood smoke, vegetative detritus, natural gas combustions and have relative small contributions compared with the traffic pollutions.
Highlights
Environmental pollution is a serious problem in many developing countries especially for those in the process of rapid industrialization, urbanization with increasing populations
Organic mass is estimated from the measurement of organic carbon (OC) and assuming that the sum of hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen in organic compounds are 80 percent of the organic carbon mass (Turpin and Lim, 2001; Bae et al, 2006)
The largest fraction of PM10 was organic mass, which is often dominated by emissions from combustion processes such as vehicle exhausts, fossil fuel combustions and biomass burnings (Schauer et al, 1996; Zheng et al, 2002) and secondary organic aerosol (SOA)
Summary
Environmental pollution is a serious problem in many developing countries especially for those in the process of rapid industrialization, urbanization with increasing populations. Inorganic matters such as ions and metal elements in total suspended particulates (TSP) have been measured in Lahore (Smith et al, 1996; Harrison et al, 1997; Rattigan et al, 2002) Their ambient concentrations, sources and impacts have been studied in the 1990s (Smith et al, 1996; Harrison et al, 1997). This goal of this manuscript is to demonstrate the feasibility and utility of molecular marker source apportionment studies in developing nations with significant atmospheric particulate matter pollution and very limited measurement based information on the sources of the particulate matter pollution
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