Diurnal variations of ambient particulate wood burning emissions and their contribution to the concentration of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Seiffen, Germany

Abstract

Residential wood burning is becoming an increasingly important cause of air quality problems since it has become a popular source of alternative energy to fossil fuel. In order to characterize the contribution of residential wood burning to local particle pollution, a field campaign was organized at the village of Seiffen (Saxony, Germany). During this campaign, an Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (AMS) was deployed in parallel to a PM<sub>1</sub> high volume filter sampler. The AMS mass spectra were analyzed using Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) to obtain detailed information about the organic aerosol (OA). Biomass-burning organic aerosol (BBOA), Hydrocarbon-like organic aerosol (HOA), and Oxygenated Organic Aerosol (OOA) were identified and represented 20%, 17% and 62% of total OA, respectively. Additionally, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) were measured by the AMS with an average concentration of 10 ng m<sup>−3</sup> and short term events of extremely high PAH concentration (up to 500 ng m<sup>−3</sup>) compared to the mean PAH value were observed during the whole measurement period. A comparison with the results from PM<sub>1</sub> filter samples showed that the BBOA factor and the AMS PAH are good indicators of the total concentration of the different monosaccharide anhydrides and PAH measured on the filter samples. Based on its low correlation with CO and the low car traffic, the HOA factor was considered to be related to residential heating using liquid fuel. An influence of the time of the week (week vs. weekend) on the diurnal profiles of the different OA components was observed. The weekdays were characterized by two maxima; a first one early in the morning and a stronger one in the evening. During the weekend days, the different OA components principally reached only one maximum in the afternoon. Finally, the PAH emitted directly from residential wood combustion was estimated to represent 1.5% of the total mass of the BBOA factor and around 62% of the total PAH concentration measured at Seiffen. This result highlights the important contribution of residential wood combustion to air quality and PAH emissions at the sampling place, which might have a significant impact on human health. Moreover, it also emphasizes the need for a better time resolution of the chemical characterization of toxic particulate compounds in order to provide more information on variations of the different sources through the days as well as to better estimate the real human exposure

Source apportionment of the submicron organic aerosols over the Atlantic Ocean from 53° N to 53° S using HR-ToF-AMS

“…The OOA factor is dominated by CxHyO values in previous studies in urban or rural areas (e.g. Lanz et al, 2007;Ng et al, 2011;Poulain et al, 2011a). Another carboxylic acid fragment CO + (m/z 28, 21 % of total OOA mass loading) is estimated according to CO2 + ion, and thus CO + is not particularly discussed in the present work.…”

“…The CxHyOzNw + ions have been related 20 to the photo-oxidation product of m-cresol, a typical wood burning emission (Iinuma et al, 2010;Poulain et al, 2011a), while potassium is commonly regarded as an unreactive tracer of BB emissions. In addition, the particles measured in the range from ~15°N to 15°S (close to the west and middle Africa) showed external mixing state by the HTDMA measurements (details in an accompany paper by Wu et al, in preparation).…”

Size distributions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in urban atmosphere: sorption mechanism and source contributions to respiratory deposition

“…Factor 2 is dominated by high loadings of PHE, FLU, and BbF and moderate loadings of CHR, BkF, BaA, IPY, and BghiP. This factor profile mainly comes from biomass burning that has been described in a previous study (Poulain et al, 2011). As the occurrence of biomass burning in Shanghai city is normally low, this source is most likely long-range transport, rather than local emission.…”

Hydroxylated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons as biomarkers of exposure to wood smoke in wildland firefighters

“…Because PAHs have been shown to increase in concentration in indoor and outdoor environments consequent upon the combustion of vegetation biomass, 24–27 it may also be possible to use hydroxylated metabolites of PAHs (OH-PAHs) for biological monitoring of wildland fire smoke exposure among wildland firefighters. PAHs may also be directly connected to the mechanisms through which wildland fire smoke particles induce toxicity through their ability to cause oxidative stress through the formation of oxygenated-PAHs (quinones).…”