Abstract
Abstract. Over the past decade, there has been an increasing interest in short-term events that negatively affect air quality such as bonfires and fireworks. High aerosol and gas concentrations generated from public bonfires or fireworks were measured in order to understand the night-time chemical processes and their atmospheric implications. Nitrogen chemistry was observed during Bonfire Night with nitrogen containing compounds in both gas and aerosol phases and further N2O5 and ClNO2 concentrations, which depleted early next morning due to photolysis of NO3 radicals and ceasing production. Particulate organic oxides of nitrogen (PONs) concentrations of 2.8 µg m−3 were estimated using the m ∕ z 46 : 30 ratios from aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS) measurements, according to previously published methods. Multilinear engine 2 (ME-2) source apportionment was performed to determine organic aerosol (OA) concentrations from different sources after modifying the fragmentation table and it was possible to identify two PON factors representing primary (pPON_ME2) and secondary (sPON_ME2) contributions. A slight improvement in the agreement between the source apportionment of the AMS and a collocated AE-31 Aethalometer was observed after modifying the prescribed fragmentation in the AMS organic spectrum (the fragmentation table) to determine PON sources, which resulted in an r2 = 0.894 between biomass burning organic aerosol (BBOA) and babs_470wb compared to an r2 = 0.861 obtained without the modification. Correlations between OA sources and measurements made using time-of-flight chemical ionisation mass spectrometry with an iodide adduct ion were performed in order to determine possible gas tracers to be used in future ME-2 analyses to constrain solutions. During Bonfire Night, strong correlations (r2) were observed between BBOA and methacrylic acid (0.92), acrylic acid (0.90), nitrous acid (0.86), propionic acid, (0.85) and hydrogen cyanide (0.76). A series of oxygenated species and chlorine compounds showed good correlations with sPON_ME2 and the low volatility oxygenated organic aerosol (LVOOA) factor during Bonfire Night and an event with low pollutant concentrations. Further analysis of pPON_ME2 and sPON_ME2 was performed in order to determine whether these PON sources absorb light near the UV region using an Aethalometer. This hypothesis was tested by doing multilinear regressions between babs_470wb and BBOA, sPON_ME2 and pPON_ME2. Our results suggest that sPON_ME2 does not absorb light at 470 nm, while pPON_ME2 and LVOOA do absorb light at 470 nm. This may inform black carbon (BC) source apportionment studies from Aethalometer measurements, through investigation of the brown carbon contribution to babs_470wb.
Highlights
Exposure to combustion aerosols has been associated with a range of negative health effects
Due to the strong correlation between babs_470wb and BBOA_ 2 (r2 = 0.880), we consider that while BBOA_2 might not represent the total organic aerosol (OA) concentrations from the Bonfire Night event, it does represent the trend of OA emitted from the biomass burning
Important nitrogen chemistry was present with high HCN, HCNO and HONO concentrations primarily emitted with the further presence of N2O5 and ClNO2 concentrations from nocturnal nitrate chemistry taking place after NOx concentrations decreased
Summary
Exposure to combustion aerosols has been associated with a range of negative health effects. Ravindra et al (2003) found that the short-term exposure to air pollutants increases the likelihood of acute health effects Due to these adverse effects, different studies have been performed to analyse air pollution during important festivities around the world, for instance New Year’s Eve celebrations (Drewnick et al, 2006; Zhang et al, 2010), the Lantern Festival in China (Wang et al, 2007) and Diwali festival in India (Pervez et al, 2016) as well as football matches such as during the Bundesliga in Mainz, Germany in 2012 (Faber et al, 2013). Different studies have been carried out to assess the air pollution during Bonfire Night in the UK; for instance targeting the particle size distribution (Colbeck and Chung, 1996), investigating PM10 concentrations in different cities around the UK during Bonfire Night celebrations (Clark, 1997) and measuring dioxins in ambient air in Oxford (Dyke et al, 1997); polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were measured in Lancaster in 2000 (Farrar et al, 2004), potentially toxic elements were measured and their association with health risks was assessed in London (Hamad et al, 2015)
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