Opposing seasonal trends for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and PM10: Health risk and sources in southwest Mexico City

Emissions of PAHs derived from sugarcane burning and processing in Chiapas and Morelos México

“…The BAP TEQ values for PM 2.5 during the no-harvest season were 385 and 205 pg m −3 in Jojutla-Zacatepec, respectively, representing 89 and 85% of the total BAP TEQ in PM 10 . These carcinogenic potentials are lower than those reported for several cities such as: Mexico City (Mugica et al, 2010a;Amador-Muñoz et al, 2013), Veneto region, Italy (Masiol et al, 2013), and the study of Cristale et al (2012), carried out within a residence surrounded by sugarcane fields; but they are higher than those determined by Agudelo-Castañeda and Teixeira (2014) in Brazil. The values obtained in this work are close to the standard established by the European Community and higher than the standard proposed in the United Kingdom (250 pg m −3 ), which should be of particular concern to governments and policy makers, since the inhabitants of the zone breathe this polluted air chronically during 6 consecutive months every year.…”

“…Some studies conducted in México were linked to the presence of PAHs in México City (Villalobos-Pietrini et al, 2006;Mugica et al, 2010b;Valle-Hernández et al, 2010;Amador-Muñoz et al, 2013), nevertheless, no data is available concerning the environmental impact or the human risk in the sugarcane regions due to PAHs emission.…”

Contribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) sources to the urban environment: A comparison of receptor models

“…Amongst the pollutants found in these environments are the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are organic pollutants originated primarily from the processes of incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. PAHs are of particular concern because of the recognized mutagenic and carcinogenic properties (Jang et al, 2013;IARC, 2010;Amador-Muñoz et al, 2013;Villalobos-Pietrini et al, 2007). Numerous studies of atmospheric PAHs conducted in Europe, North America, and Northeast Asia have found that automobiles were the major contributors of PAHs in the urban atmosphere and many recent studies have focused upon traffic as a source of PAH in urban areas (Agudelo-Castañeda and Jang et al, 2013;Miller et al, 2010 between others).…”

Estimating population exposure to ambient polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon in the United States – Part II: Source apportionment and cancer risk assessment

“…In addition, some studies used carbon isotope dating to differentiate contributions from biomass burning to fossil fuel combustion (Mandalakis et al, 2005; Sheesley et al, 2009; Zencak et al, 2007). While the molecular diagnostic ratio (MDR) technique has been applied in several studies (Fu et al, 2010; Schifman and Boving, 2015; Zhang et al, 2005), many PAH MDRs vary significantly in space and time due to different reaction rates in the atmosphere and the estimates were not valid source markers (Amador-Munoz et al, 2013; Katsoyiannis et al, 2011; Tobiszewski and Namiesnik, 2012). Major sources identified as contributing to ambient PAH concentrations include open burning of agriculture residuals (Chen et al, 2008), gasoline and diesel vehicles (Larsen and Baker, 2003), coal combustion (Chen et al, 2011), wood combustion (Piazzalunga et al, 2013) and industrial sources such as refineries (Motelay-Massei et al, 2007).…”