2001-2011 Trends of PM2.5, PM10 and aerosol chemical compounds in Lisbon, Portugal
Title: 2001-2011 Trends of PM2.5, PM10 and aerosol chemical compounds in Lisbon, Portugal
Authors: Faria T., Almeida S.M., Almeida-Silva M.
Abstract:
The health effects of airborne particulate matter (PM) have been subject of intense study in recent years and as a consequence the World Health Organization’ s specialized cancer agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified PM as carcinogenic to human beings. According with the European Environmental Agency (EEA) “Air Quality in Europe – 2016 report” (EEA, 2016), in Portugal, 6070 premature deaths were attributed to PM2.5 exposure, in 2013. The exposure to PM remains of major environment-related health concern, linked to acute and chronic respiratory and cardiovascular effects, impaired lung development in children, reduced birth weight and mortality.
PM effects have been seen at very low levels of exposure and there is no evidence of a threshold below which no adverse health effects occur. This is due to the fact that PM is a complex mixture of microscopic particles enriched with different chemicals, including heavy metals and organic compounds, derived from both anthropogenic and natural sources. From a mechanistic perspective, it is highly plausible that the chemical composition of PM would better predict health effects than other characteristics such as PM mass or size.
The development of an innovative, versatile and modular policy tool that establishes a relation between population exposure to PM chemical compounds, health effects and emission sources is an effort materialized through the project LIFE Index-Air (www.lifeindexair.net). This tool combines a database on outdoor and indoor PM chemicals with a pack of models to select cost-effective improvement measures to protect human health.
This work elaborated within the development of the first module of the LIFE Index-Air tool – the Air Quality Database Module – aims to evaluate and interpret the trends of PM2.5, PM10 and aerosol chemical compounds in Lisbon, Portugal. Monitoring stations from Lisbon, belonging to the Portuguese Air Quality network, were selected and time series for PM2.5, PM10 and aerosol chemical compounds were compared with emission inventories and policy actions (Fig. 1).
PM concentrations show that there is a great deal of improvement with respect to emission control strategies of anthropogenic emission in Europe, such as Integrated Prevention and Pollution Control Directive (1996/61/EC, Industrial Emissions Directive 2010/75/EC), the Large Combustion Plants Directive (2001/80/EC), the National Emission Ceilings Directive (2001/81/EC) and the EURO standards on road traffic emission (1998/69/EC, 2002/80/EC, 2007/715/EC); to air quality plans implemented in Lisbon region; and c) to financial crisis.
Fig. 1 – Number of vehicles in Portugal, in accordance with the European emission standards. Total number of vehicles in Lisbon. PM10 concentrations measured in a Lisbon traffic and background station – hourly and yearly trends for the period 2001-2011.
This work was supported by the European Community through the project LIFE Index-Air (LIFE15 ENV/PT/000674). C2TN/IST authors gratefully acknowledge the FCT support to the UID/Multi/04349/2013 project.
EEA (2016), Air Quality in Europe – 2016 report. European Environment Agency (EEA). (2016). Air quality in Europe — 2016 report. Tech. Rep. 28/2016. ISSN 1977-844
Type of publication: Poster abstract published at 5th Iberian Meeting on Aerosol Science and Technology (RICTA2017)
Abstract to download: here
Poster to download: here
Photos of the Poster presentation: here
