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Street protests and air pollution in Hong Kong

June 2019 saw large-scale street protests in Hong Kong that impeded traffic flow along streets in areas around to the Legislative Council building. These had the potential to reduce overall air pollutant emissions from traffic and lower their concentrations. Two roadside monitoring stations relative...

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Autor principal: Brimblecombe, Peter
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7167378/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32307590
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-8243-0
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author Brimblecombe, Peter
author_facet Brimblecombe, Peter
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description June 2019 saw large-scale street protests in Hong Kong that impeded traffic flow along streets in areas around to the Legislative Council building. These had the potential to reduce overall air pollutant emissions from traffic and lower their concentrations. Two roadside monitoring stations relatively close to the Legislative Council reveal that measured concentrations of nitrogen dioxide declined during the protests compared with measurements from other sites by at least 50% on many occasions. There were only subtle changes in particulate loads and no evidence of any reduction in carbon monoxide concentrations. Pedestrianisation and bus route rationalisation are often seen as methods to reduce exposure in congested areas, but the observations here suggest that the substantial improvements in the nitrogen dioxide levels might not be matched by improvements in other pollutants. Plans for changes to street layouts to improve air quality need careful investigation before they are implemented.
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spelling pubmed-71673782020-04-27 Street protests and air pollution in Hong Kong Brimblecombe, Peter Environ Monit Assess Article June 2019 saw large-scale street protests in Hong Kong that impeded traffic flow along streets in areas around to the Legislative Council building. These had the potential to reduce overall air pollutant emissions from traffic and lower their concentrations. Two roadside monitoring stations relatively close to the Legislative Council reveal that measured concentrations of nitrogen dioxide declined during the protests compared with measurements from other sites by at least 50% on many occasions. There were only subtle changes in particulate loads and no evidence of any reduction in carbon monoxide concentrations. Pedestrianisation and bus route rationalisation are often seen as methods to reduce exposure in congested areas, but the observations here suggest that the substantial improvements in the nitrogen dioxide levels might not be matched by improvements in other pollutants. Plans for changes to street layouts to improve air quality need careful investigation before they are implemented. Springer International Publishing 2020-04-19 2020 /pmc/articles/PMC7167378/ /pubmed/32307590 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-8243-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Brimblecombe, Peter
Street protests and air pollution in Hong Kong
title Street protests and air pollution in Hong Kong
title_full Street protests and air pollution in Hong Kong
title_fullStr Street protests and air pollution in Hong Kong
title_full_unstemmed Street protests and air pollution in Hong Kong
title_short Street protests and air pollution in Hong Kong
title_sort street protests and air pollution in hong kong
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7167378/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32307590
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-8243-0
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