Nepal Ambient Monitoring and Source Testing Experiment (NAMaSTE): emissions of particulate matter and sulfur dioxide from vehicles and brick kilns and their impacts on air quality in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

Zhong, Min; Saikawa, Eri; Avramov, Alexander; Chen, Chen; Bo-ya, Sun; Ye, Wenlu; Keene, W. C.; Yokelson, R. J.; Stone, Elizabeth A.; Rupakheti, Maheswar; Panday, Arnico K.

doi:10.5194/acp-19-8209-2019

Cited by 18 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(68 reference statements)

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“…Indeed, total fuel consumption in India rose by 38% between 2000 and 2008, which resulted in a significant increase in the emissions of air pollutants . South Asia also has other major sources of air pollution, such as open crop residue burning and domestic biofuel use …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Garbage Burning in South Asia: How Important Is It to Regional Air Quality?

Saikawa

Zhong

et al. 2020

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Increasing air pollution in South Asia has serious consequences for air quality and human/ecosystem health within the region. South Asia, including India and Nepal, suffers from severe air pollution, including high concentrations of aerosols, as well as gaseous pollutants. One of the often-neglected sources contributing to the regional air pollution is garbage burning. It is mostly related to numerous yet small, open, uncontrolled fires burning diverse fuels, making it difficult to quantify activity and emissions. In this study, we attempted to quantify the total emissions due to garbage burning and its contribution to regional air quality, using new observational data, a new inventory, and a regional chemical transport model. We implemented the newly available emission factors (EFs) from a recent field campaign, Nepal Ambient Monitoring and Source Testing Experiment (NAMaSTE), which took place in April 2015. Using a chemical transport modelWeather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry version 3.5 (WRF-Chem)and three emission scenarios, we assessed the impact of open garbage burning emissions on regional air quality. Our results show that garbage burning emissions could increase PM2.5 concentrations by nearly 30% in India and Nepal, and result in ∼300 000 premature deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the two countries.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Garbage Burning in South Asia: How Important Is It to Regional Air Quality?

Saikawa

Zhong

et al. 2020

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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“…As the data of Figure 4 represents the high intensity of old technology kilns are operating in the province which is the largest contributor of air pollutants. The air pollutants level regarding old technology brick kilns are associated with the use of different types of fuel (Sanjel et al, 2016), such as coal (Kumar et al, 2016), old tyres (Gomes and Hossain, 2003;Joshi and Dudani, 2008), agricultural residues (Hameed et al, 2018), bagasse (Kazmi et al, 2016), wood (Tahir and Rafique, 2009;Skinder et al, 2014), industrial waste (Peter et al, 2018), biomass (Zhong et al, 2019), and manure (Blackman, 2000).…”

Section: Brick Kilns In Punjabmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brick Sector and Air Quality: An Integrated Assessment towards 2020 Challenge of Environment Development

Pervaiz

Akram

Khan

et al. 2021

Environ. Nat. Resour. J.

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Brick sector is a mainstay of the urban economy of Punjab. The traditional technology of brick making emits a lot of toxic gases and smoke particulates into air. Hence, the Government of the Punjab, Pakistan announced a ban on low technology brick kiln operations during winter season by the end of December 2020. Initially, the existing set up of brick kilns and air pollution levels were evaluated before and during lockdown period using spatial application. Further, environmental parameters such as aerosols, carbon monoxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide were determined to analyze the air quality, including metrological factors. Results of the study exhibited that the upper and central regions of Punjab are the major hubs of brick kilns. So, the level of air quality was inconsistent in the study period due to the existence of large mushrooms of brick kilns. Further, despite lockdown the highest concentration of carbon monoxide was recorded in the eastern side of the province, such as Kasur, Lahore, and Sheikhupura. The level of aerosols also fluctuated and shifted its trends in the central and southern part of the province. While SO2 and CO2 level declined and revealed a satisfactory level of air quality during shutdown. On the other hand, no significant relation to metrological factors, such as rain, is involved in the pollution reduction. Conclusively, the findings of the present study encourage the government agencies to realign the stringent control measures to improve the quality of air in the winter months using the experience of quarantine in 2020.

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“…For five out of six factors we validated the factor profiles generated by the PMF model against grab samples collected at the source. Factor profiles were cross-correlated with the fingerprints of source samples collected from a number of potential sources including wheat-residue fires (Chandra et al, 2017;Kumar et al, 2018), ambient air samples from a busy traffic junction (Chandra et al, 2017) and an industrial area (this study), tailpipes of various vehicles (this study), waste burning (Sharma et al, 2019), leaf litter burning (this study), domestic biofuel use (Stockwell et al, 2016), and brick kilns (Zhong et al, 2019) to identify the sources. Figure 3 shows the factor profiles obtained from the PMF run (in dark blue), the percentage of each species explained by the respective PMF factor (red squares) and the source profiles of those sources which best matched the factor profile (in various colors as indicated in the legend).…”

Section: Validation Of the Pmf Outputmentioning

confidence: 99%

Source apportionment of volatile organic compounds in the northwest Indo-Gangetic Plain using a positive matrix factorization model

Pallavi¹,

Sinha

2019

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Abstract. In this study we undertook quantitative source apportionment for 32 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) measured at a suburban site in the densely populated northwest Indo-Gangetic Plain using the US EPA PMF 5.0 model. Six sources were resolved by the PMF model. In descending order of their contribution to the total VOC burden these are “biofuel use and waste disposal” (23.2 %), “wheat-residue burning”(22.4 %), “cars” (16.2 %), “mixed daytime sources”(15.7 %) “industrial emissions and solvent use”(11.8 %), and “two-wheelers” (8.6 %). Wheat-residue burning is the largest contributor to the total ozone formation potential (32.4 %). For the emerging contaminant isocyanic acid, photochemical formation from precursors (37 %) and wheat-residue burning (25 %) were the largest contributors to human exposure. Wheat-residue burning was also the single largest source of the photochemical precursors of isocyanic acid, namely, formamide, acetamide and propanamide, indicating that this source must be most urgently targeted to reduce human concentration exposure to isocyanic acid in the month of May. Our results highlight that for accurate air quality forecasting and modeling it is essential that emissions are attributed only to the months in which the activity actually occurs. This is important for emissions from crop residue burning, which occur in May and from mid-October to the end of November. The SOA formation potential is dominated by cars (36.9 %) and two-wheelers (21.1 %), which also jointly account for 47% of the human class I carcinogen benzene in the PMF model. This stands in stark contrast to various emission inventories which estimate only a minor contribution of the transport sector to the benzene exposure (∼10 %) and consider residential biofuel use, agricultural residue burning and industry to be more important benzene sources. Overall it appears that none of the emission inventories represent the regional emissions in an ideal manner. Our PMF solution suggests that transport sector emissions may be underestimated by GAINSv5.0 and EDGARv4.3.2 and overestimated by REASv2.1, while the combined effect of residential biofuel use and waste disposal emissions as well as the VOC burden associated with solvent use and industrial sources may be overestimated by all emission inventories. The agricultural waste burning emissions of some of the detected compound groups (ketones, aldehydes and acids) appear to be missing in the EDGARv4.3.2 inventory.

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Nepal Ambient Monitoring and Source Testing Experiment (NAMaSTE): emissions of particulate matter and sulfur dioxide from vehicles and brick kilns and their impacts on air quality in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

Cited by 18 publications

References 44 publications

Garbage Burning in South Asia: How Important Is It to Regional Air Quality?

Garbage Burning in South Asia: How Important Is It to Regional Air Quality?

Brick Sector and Air Quality: An Integrated Assessment towards 2020 Challenge of Environment Development

Source apportionment of volatile organic compounds in the northwest Indo-Gangetic Plain using a positive matrix factorization model

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