The Inventory of Pollutants Hazardous to the Health of Living Organisms, Emitted by Road Transport in Poland between 1990 and 2017

Katarzyna Bebkiewicz,Zdzisław Chłopek,Krystian Szczepański,Jakub Lasocki,Magdalena Zimakowska-Laskowska

doi:10.3390/su12135387

Abstract

The paper provides the results of the inventory of pollutants hazardous to the health of living organisms, emitted by road transport in Poland between 1990 and 2017. For estimating pollutant emissions from road transport, a standardized methodology was applied, consistent with the guidance of EEA/EMEP Emission Inventory Guidebook 2019 and the COPERT 5 software. The following substances were analyzed: carbon monoxide (CO), non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter size fractions (total suspended particles—TSP, PM10, PM2.5). For the pollutants, emission values averaged over the distance travelled by the road fleet (average specific distance emission) were determined. The results obtained indicated that between 1990 and 2017 the annual pollutant emissions from road vehicles in Poland had an increasing trend concerning TSP (74%), PM10 (64%), PM2.5 (52%) and NOx (25%), while the corresponding emissions had a decreasing trend for CO (−117%) and NMVOC (−85%). However, a clear downward trend was found for the average specific distance emissions of all substances throughout the subsequent inventory years: TSP (−28%), PM10 (−100%), PM2.5 (−91%), NOx (−84%), CO (−208%) and NMVOC (−173%), which is due to the dynamic progress in the technological advancement of road vehicles.

Highlights

Air pollution from anthropogenic sources contributes to climate change and is recognized as a major environmental health risk to human health
The adopted modeling approach is based on the assumption that the total pollutant emission from road transport is a superposition of pollutant emission released from individual vehicles
1×1010 according to the results presented previously, the strongest tendency to decrease is for the emission of carbon monoxide and non-methane volatile organic compounds

Summary

Introduction

Air pollution from anthropogenic sources contributes to climate change and is recognized as a major environmental health risk to human health. The primary sources of air pollutants due to anthropogenic activity include the combustion of fossil fuels to produce energy (heat and electricity), major industrial processes (e.g., metallurgy, cement and construction industry), agriculture and transport [6]. Inventorying the emission of pollutants from road transport is more challenging than the emission from other human made sources. Estimation of the pollutant emission from all road transport in a given region over a given period of time is only possible through the use of emission modelling [8,9,10]. It is likewise in the case of energy consumption by road vehicles [9]. It is possible to approximate the fuel consumption of all vehicles in a given region over a given period of time, based on the statistical data on fuel sales [9]

Methods

Results

Conclusion