Jord Vand Luft Dyr og planter Grønland Samfund
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English summary

A four-year project
In year 2000 the Danish Parliament decided to fund a four-year particle research programme, which should include characterisation of physical and chemical properties of the particles in Denmark and their sources and also assess the adverse health effects and the socioeconomic impact in the Danish society. A steering group chaired by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (DEPA) co-ordinates the programme, and the National Environmental Research Institute (NERI) carries out the characterisation of particles and their sources and the socio-economic aspects. The health effect studies are carried out at different institutions and universities, e.g. Danish Cancer Society and University of Copenhagen (Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Institute of Public Health).

Objectives
The overall objective of the particle programme is to provide new and broader knowledge in Denmark on the health effect of atmospheric particles with the aim to develop strategies to reduce the adverse health effect of man-made and natural sources. The activities should be closely related to other activities in Denmark and internationally.

Specifically National Environmental Research Institute (NERI) shall investigate emissions, size distributions, chemical composition, transformation and dispersion of particles.

The present report is the mid-term report on the activities at NERI.

Approach
The experimental research is mainly taking outset in the Danish air quality monitoring programme operated by NERI (Kemp & Palmgren, 2003), which include continuous, long time series of the main pollutants related to the most important sources in Denmark. The monitoring programme is supplemented by special particle related measurement campaigns. This combination of long time series of traditional pollutants and the special particle campaigns permits establishment of relationships between sources and the properties of the particles (sizes and physical/chemical properties).

The studies
The investigations included emission inventories of Danish stationary and mobile sources, experimental studies of PM10, PM2.5 and ultrafine particles in Denmark in busy street canyons, urban background and rural locations. The studies included chemical composition, e.g. the content of elemental carbon, and size distributions. Emission factors of particles from traffic were estimated under actual driving on the basis of the air quality measurements. Finally, also the penetration and deposition op particles (PM10, PM2.5 and ultrafine particles) in an apartment facing a busy street was estimated. The results of the experimental studies were applied for development and validation of NERI's air quality and exposure models for particles.

Main conclusions
The road traffic and wood stoves are the particle sources, which cause the highest outdoor human exposure due to high emissions, at low release heights and in urban areas, where the population lives, works and goes about.

Diesel vehicles are the dominating source of nano-particles and ultrafine particles. Modern petrol cars do only contribute a little the PM pollution. In addition to the tailpipe, the non-exhaust emissions from wear of road surfaces, tires, brakes etc contributes significantly to the PM10 pollution from diesel as well as from petrol vehicles. The nonexhaust emission depends on many factors, e.g. wind speed, salting and sanding of roads in winter, precipitation and properties of the road surface.

The highest emissions of particles take place from traditional diesel vehicles without filters or catalysts. The particle filters are generally very efficient (>95%) for all particles including nano particles and ultrafine particles. The oxidising catalysts on diesel vehicles remove a significant part of the semi-volatile particles (condensates, which are fuel, lubricants or reaction products).

Long-range transported particles, i.e. primary particles and secondary particles formed by oxidation of SO2 and NOx emitted at the European continent, are dominating in urban background and comparable with the traffic contribution in busy streets (mass concentration, PM10/PM2.5).

Many more results are reviewed in this report and published in reports and international journals, see the references under the authors of this report.

Full report in pdf. format (1650 KB)
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Helle Thomsen

01.11.2007


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