An Analysis of Secondary Pollutants in Buenos Aires City

Abstract

Air pollutant concentrations from a monitoring campaign in Buenos Aires City, Argentina, are used to investigate the relationships between ambient levels of ozone (O3), nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) as a function of NO(x) (= NO + NO2). This campaign undertaken by the electricity sector was aimed at elucidating the apportionment of thermal power plants to air quality deterioration. Concentrations of carbon monoxide (CO) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) were also registered. Photo stationary state (PSS) of the NO, NO2, O3 and peroxy radicals species has been analysed. The 'oxidant' level concept has been introduced, OX (= O3 + NO2), which varies with the level of NO(x). It is shown that this level is made up of NO(x)-independent and NO(x)-dependent contributions. The former is a regional contribution that equates the background O3 level, whereas the latter is a local contribution that correlates with the level of primary pollution. Furthermore, the anticorrelation between NO2 and O3 levels, which is a characteristic of the atmospheric photo stationary cycle has been verified. The analysis of the concentration of the primary pollutants CO and NO strongly suggests that the vehicle traffic is the principal source of them. Levels of continuous measurements of SO2 for Buenos Aires City are reported in this work as a complement of previously published results.

Air pollution sources of PM10 in Buenos Aires City

“…Previous analysis of gaseous pollutants, either primary (Bogo et al 2001) or secondary (Reich et al 2006) are consistent with our results. The high concentrations of sulfur in all the measured samples together with the negligible concentration of SO 2 in the local ambient air allows to assess the role of emissions from long distance sources of this gaseous pollutants.…”

“…The measured average sulfur concentrations of about 3 μg m −3 were unexpectedly high for the area since there is evidence in previous studies carried out in Buenos Aires that the concentrations of the primary pollutant SO 2 are relatively low (Bogo et al 2003;Reich et al 2006). The low emission of this element from combustion activities is as consequence of the massive usage of natural gas together with the fact that the Argentinean oil products present low percentages of sulfur.…”

“…Although source composition profiles should be developed from direct sampling and analysis for the specific period and the location under study, no such data is available for all sources in Argentina and thus surrogate profiles selected from the US EPA SPECIATE database (2002) and from the literature (Reich et al 2006;Park and Kim 2004;Okuda et al 2004;Taylor 1964;Wedepohl 1995) were considered. Table 2 summarizes the employed surrogate profiles.…”

New Approaches for Urban and Regional Air Pollution Modelling and Management

“…At present, in spite of its extension and its high population density, Buenos Aires City has only a small air quality monitoring network, mainly dedicated to capture traffic pollution in 4 points of the city. Besides this fact, there have been several measurement campaigns at different sites in the city (Arkouli et al, 2010;Bogo et al, 1999;Mazzeo et al, 2005;Reich et al, 2006). Even though there are no large industries inside the city, a great industrial complex is located in the southeast.…”

Atmospheric Particulate Matter Variability during 2014 at Buenos Aires City (Argentina) Comparing Ground-Based Measurements and Satellite Data

“…These research studies are focused on topics such as impact assessment of specific sources, characterization of multi-elemental aerosol composition, and source identification through receiver models [8][9][10].…”