The Unignorable Near-ground PM2.5, UFP, PAHs, and BC Levels around a Traffic Prohibited Night Market

Abstract

In some special densely populated areas, the background atmospheric fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration is very high, which makes near-ground (NG) exposure a major problem endangering human health. In our study, the night market in Chiayi City was selected as the research object and collected the 24-hour PM2.5 samples through the federal reference method (FRM), characterizing the mass concentration, water-soluble ionic components, carbon specious, metal compositions and source contributions of PM2.5. To better analyze the contribution of traffic sources under different sampling conditions, the mobile real-time monitoring system was used to analyze the quality of NG-PM2.5, the number of ultra-fine particles (UFP), the concentration of black carbon (BC) and total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) before and after the traffic restriction. Results indicated the concentration of PM2.5 was 7.26–58.6 mg m-3. In chemical analysis, secondary contents e.g., carbonaceous and ionic components accounted for ~60% of the PM2.5, supporting the importance of long-range transport. However, the traffic contribution accounted for ~30% and hardly changed between different samples, which was not conducive to source apportionment. Through traffic restriction, it was found that all kinds of pollutants increased significantly before restriction, and even after restriction, the concentrations of PM2.5 and BC increased 131% and 151% in low concentration season. In the high concentration season, the traffic restriction significantly reduced the NG-UFP and NG-PAH concentration by 27% and 55%, respectively, but NG-BC and NG-PM2.5 was almost unaffected. Therefore, besides the contribution of traffic source, emissions from cooking activities are very important for the increase of NG-PM2.5 levels in the night market area.