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Long–Range Transport of Soil Dust and Smoke Pollution in the South Asian

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Long–Range Transport of Soil Dust and Smoke Pollution in the South Asian View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector AtmosphericPollutionResearch2(2011)151Ͳ157 Atmospheric Pollution Research www.atmospolres.com Long–rangetransportofsoildustandsmokepollutionintheSouth Asianregion BilkisA.Begum1,SwapanK.Biswas1,GauriG.Pandit2,I.VijayaSaradhi2,ShahidaWaheed3, NailaSiddique3,M.C.ShiraniSeneviratne4,DavidD.Cohen5,AndreasMarkwitz6,PhilipK.Hopke7 1BangladeshAtomicEnergyCommission(BAEC),AtomicEnergyCentre,Dhaka(AECD),P.O.Box:164,Dhaka, Bangladesh 2BhabaAtomicEnergyCentre,Trombay,Mumbai,400085,India 3ChemistryDivision,DirectorateofScience,PakistanInstituteofNuclearScienceandTechnology(PINSTECH),P.O.Nilore,Islamabad,45650Pakistan 4AtomicEnergyAuthority,60/460,BaselineRoad,Orugodawatta,Wellampitiya,SriLanka 5AustralianNuclearScienceandTechnologyOrganisation(ANSTO)LockedBag2001,KirraweeDC,NSW,Australia 6GNSScience,30GracefieldRoad,P.O.Box31Ͳ312,LowerHutt,NewZealand 7CentreforAirResourcesEngineeringandScience,DepartmentofChemicalandBiomolecularEngineering,ClarksonUniversity,Potsdam,NY136999Ͳ 5708,UnitedStates ABSTRACT TransboundarytransportofairpollutionintheSouthAsianregionhasbeenanissueofincreasingimportanceoverthe Keywords: pastseveraldecades.Long–rangetransportofanthropogenicpollutioniscontrastedwiththatofpollutionproduced Airborneparticulatematter by natural processes such as dust storms or natural forest fires. Airborne particulate matter datasets covering the LongͲrangetransport periodfrom2002to2007fromtheneighboringcountrieslikeBangladesh,India,PakistanandSriLankawereusedto Blackcarbon findthesourceareasthatareprimarilyresponsibleforlongrangetransportedpollutants.Allfourcountriescollected Soil sampleswiththesametypeofsamplerandfollowthesametechniqueformassandBCmeasurements.Itwasfound thathighfinesoilcontributionswerefromduststorms.Ontheotherhand,smokeinthisregionmainlycomesfrom ArticleHistory: northernIndiawhereagriculturalwasteisoftenburned. Received:10May2010 Revised:02June2010 Accepted:07June2010 CorrespondingAuthor: PhilipK.Hopke Tel:+1Ͳ3152683861 Fax:+1Ͳ315Ͳ268Ͳ4410 EͲmail:[email protected] ©Author(s)2011.ThisworkisdistributedundertheCreativeCommonsAttribution3.0License. doi:10.5094/APR.2011.020 1.Introduction (Pandve and Patil, 2008). There are two possible sources for the particlesinhaze.Theyareeithergeneratednaturally(e.g.seasalt, TheAsianBrownCloudisalayerofairpollutionthatcovers soil dust) or are man–made (e.g., sulfate and soot). From an partsofSouthAsia,namelythenorthernIndianOcean,Indiaand aircraft,thehazeappearsbrownwhenthefractionofsootorsoil Pakistan (Ramanathan et al., 2001; Srinivasan and Gadgil, 2002) dust is large. The potent haze lying over the entire Indian and the cloud appears as a giant brown stain hanging in the air subcontinent –from Sri Lanka to Afghanistan – has led to some overmuchofSouthAsiaandtheIndianOceaneveryyearbetween erratic weather, sparking floods in Bangladesh, Nepal and JanuaryandMarch.Thevisibleimpactofairpollutionisthehaze,a northeastern IndiabutdroughtinPakistanandnorthwesternIndia layer of pollutants and particles from biomass burning and (Ramanathanetal.,2007). industrial emissions. This Asian Brown Cloud of pollutants has a brownish color and this brown cloud phenomenon is a common Hazeisanatmosphericphenomenonwheredust,smokeand featureofindustrialandruralregionsaroundtheworld(UNEPand other dry particles affect visibility and obscure the clarity of the C4, 2002). Because of long–range transport of air pollutants, the sky. Sources for haze particles include farming, traffic, industry, mostlyurban(fossilfuelrelated)and/orrural(biomassburningand and wildfires. Haze often occurs when dust and smoke particles brickkilnrelated)phenomenonistransformedintoaregionalhaze accumulateinrelativelydryair.Subsequentincreasesinhumidity (orcloud)thatcanspanlargeareasincludinganentirecontinent.It can result in hygroscopic growth and decreased visibility.When is now becoming clear that the brown cloud mayehav huge weather conditions block the dispersal of smoke and other impactsonagriculture,health,climateandthewaterbudgetofthe pollutants they concentrate and form a usually low–hanging planet(Ramanathan,2008;RamanathanandCarmichael,2008). shroudthatimpairsvisibilityandmaybecomearespiratoryhealth threat.Industrialpollutioncanalsoresultindensehaze. The haze was really defined as a result of the INDOEX measurement campaign (Ramanathan et al., 2001; UNEP and C4, The main objective of this study is to locate the sources of 2002).This haze consists of acombination of droplets and solid significant events of fine soil dust and smoke particles in the particles.Thedropletsinthehazearelessthan1.0Pminradius atmospheric aerosol that are major causes of haze in the South 152 Begumetal.–AtmosphericPollutionResearch2(2011)151Ͳ157 Asian region. Regional fine air particle data dated from January ThesamplerinColombo,SriLankawaslocatedattheAtomic 2002 to December 2007 that includes mass, black carbon and EnergyAgency(AEA)facility (6.933°N,79.833°E)andthesampler elemental concentrations in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri wasplacedontheflatareaonthefirstflooroftheAEAbuilding. Lanka measured using appropriate nuclear analytical techniques Thisbuildingissetinaresidentialareaonthenorthwesternsideof were analyzed to understand the haze problem and long–range Colombo.Therearemoderatelybusyroadswithin300m. transportoffineparticles. The sampler in Nilore, Islamabad, Pakistan (33.37°N and 2.Methodology 73.06°E)islocatedontheroofofabuildingatPINSTECHataheight ofapproximately5–6maboveground.Theinletofthesampleris 2.1.Sampledescriptionandanalysis at a height of a1 m above roof level. The nearest road is 1 km away. The air flow is unobstructed as the buildings are well AllthefourcountriescollectedsamplesusetheGentstacked separated.Thesurroundingareaconsistsofsomeresidencesand filtersampler(Hopkeetal.,1997),whichiscapableofcollectingair farms. The Nilore site is located on the outskirts of the city of particulatesamplesincoarse(2.5–10Pm)andfine(<2.5Pm)size Islamabad.Thisareawasmostlyfarmlanduntil10yearsago,but fractions. The sampling locations are shown in Figure 1 and the nowmanyhousingunitsarebeingdevelopedinthisarea.Theroad sampling sites description and analytical techniques used for leadingtoPINSTECHfromthemaincityisbeingwidenedthatwill sample analysis for individual countries are given in Table 1. In furtherincreasethisurbanizationprocess. Dhaka,Bangladesh,thesiteisatasemi–residentialarealocatedat the Atomic Energy Centre, Dhaka (AECD) Campus (23.73°N, The samples were collected on Nuclepore filters with 8 Pm 90.40°E).Thesamplerwasplacedontheflatroofofthebuildingat poresforthecoarsefractionsamplesand0.4Pmporesforthefine aheightof5mabovetheground.Theintakenozzleofthesampler fractionsamples.Ingeneral,sampleswerecollectedforrepresenͲ is located 1.8m above the roof. The intake is about 80m away tative24–hourperiodsatleastonceaweek.Insomelocations,it from the roadside. The sample was placed so that the airflow wasnotpossibletocollectthesampleoverafull24hoursbecause arounditwasunobstructed. offilterclogging.Thenthesamplerwasoperatedwithalternating timeonandtimeoff(e.g.onehouronfollowedbyonehouroff) overthecourseofthe24–hourperiodtoprovidearepresentative sample during that day. In all cases, the total sampling time was neverlessthan8–hoursequallydistributedover24–hours. Themethodsusedforthegravimetricmassmeasurementand the black carbon measurements are same for the four countries (Hopke et al., 2008). The collected samples were analyzed using nuclear analytical methods including Ion Beam Analysis (IBA) (Cohen et al., 1996), X–ray Fluorescence (XRF) and Instrumental NeutronActivationAnalysis(INAA).Thesemethodsaredescribed indetailelsewhere(LandsbergerandCreatchmam,1999). 2.2.Sourcefingerprints TheIBAorXRFanalysesofPMsamplesprovidedopportunities of detecting sufficient number of elemental concentrations to developfingerprintsforanumberofparticlesources.Itisusefulto combinesomeoftheseelementsandestimatetheconcentrations of the major compounds such as ammonium sulfate from the measured sulfur concentration. It is also possible to derive other combinations of the elements that represent signatures for interesting aerosol components. These combinations are called pseudo–elements such as “soil” (Malm et al., 1994). Thus, these Figure1.Maplocatingthesamplingsites. composite variables and pseudo–elements provide a better understandingofthecompositionofthefineparticlesandleadto ThesamplerinMumbai,Indiawasplacedataheightof15m betterestimatesofpossiblesourcesandtheircontributionstothe above the ground on the terrace of a building in Vashi that is averageambientaerosol(Malmetal.,1994). situatedinNaviMumbai.NaviMumbaiisthelargestplannednew city near Mumbai (19.07°N, 72.97°E). The city is very close to 2.3.Soil Thane Belapur area that was known as largest industrial belt in India. The industrial estate is mainly comprised of chemical, bulk WindblownsoiliscomposedmainlyoftheoxidesofMg,Al,Si, drugs and intermediates, dye and dye intermediates, pharmaͲ Ca, Ti and Fe with many other trace elements. The average ceutical, pesticide, petrochemical, engineering goods and textile composition of sandstone and sedimentary rocks and the manufacturingindustries.Anationalhighwaypasses2kmfromthe summationofthe5majoroxidesofAl,Si,Ca,TiandFeaccountfor samplingsite. morethat85%ofthetotalcomposition(WeastandAstle,1982). Sotheequationforsoilis: Table1.Informationofthesamplingsites Site Sampling Analytical Country Latitude Longitude
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