Development and evaluation of a mobile laboratory for collecting short-duration near-road fine and coarse ambient particle and road dust samples. (1st February 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Martins, Marco; Lawrence, Joy; Ferguson, Stephen; Wolfson, Jack M.; Koutrakis, Petros
• Is Part Of: Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association. Volume 71:Number 2(2021)
• Page Start: 118
• Page End: 128
• Publication Date: 2021-02-01
• Subjects: Air -- Pollution -- Periodicals; Air quality management -- Periodicals; Hazardous wastes -- Management -- Periodicals; Air Pollution -- prevention & control -- Periodicals; Hazardous Waste -- prevention & control -- Periodicals; Waste Management -- Periodicals; 628.5305
• DOI: 10.1080/10962247.2020.1853626
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1047-3289

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This study used fine and coarse PM concentrator technology in a Mobile Particle Concentrator Platform (MPCP) designed and built to allow the collection of large amounts of ambient PM, enabling time-resolved speciation analysis, which would not be feasible using conventional methods. One hour of sampling yielded sufficient sample loading for trace elemental analysis using X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF). In addition, we developed a novel Road Dust Aerosolizer (RDA) sampler in order to collect PM2.5 and PM10 surface road dust in situ . This sampler aerosolizes dust from the road surface, simulating ambient road dust resuspension, resulting in measured PM composition and size more appropriately (and less labor-intensive) than those obtained from studies using bulk road dust sieved and re-suspended in the laboratory. Overall, our modified fine and coarse particle concentrators yielded good reproducibility between co-located samples and sufficient loading for trace elemental analysis. For particle mass concentration, we observed a relative error of 3% and 4% among pairs of filters for fine and coarse concentrators, respectively; confirming that the mass collected on an unweighted quartz filter in parallel with a Teflon filter will have the same PM mass as the weighed Teflon filter. For samples with elements that are well above the LOD, relative uncertainty values were between 5% and 10% for the fine and 3% and 10% for the coarse. Our results show that the RDA system has an excellent precision for mass and elements as well. The relative error for mass is 7% for PM10 and 3% for PM2.5 within pairs and ranged from 2 to10% for elements. In conclusion, we developed a method for collecting PM10 and PM2.5 near-road air and surface road dust for short durations, which allows investigation of the composition of direct (airborne) and indirect (re-suspended road dust) non-tailpipe vehicular emissions. Implications : The methods we developed in this study allow the collection of one-hour PM10-2.5 and PM2.5–0.2 samples from near-road ambient air at several distances from the same roadway in 1 day, and collection of road dust directly from the road surface, with sufficient loading for trace elemental analysis. This will allow investigation of the composition of direct (airborne) and indirect (re-suspended road dust) vehicular emissions.