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Quantifying road traffic impact on air quality in urban areas: A Covid19-induced lockdown analysis in Italy()
Covid19-induced lockdown measures caused modifications in atmospheric pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. Urban road traffic was the most impacted, with 48–60% average reduction in Italy. This offered an unprecedented opportunity to assess how a prolonged (∼2 months) and remarkable abatement of...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier Ltd.
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7500435/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33254679 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.115682 |
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author | Gualtieri, Giovanni Brilli, Lorenzo Carotenuto, Federico Vagnoli, Carolina Zaldei, Alessandro Gioli, Beniamino |
author_facet | Gualtieri, Giovanni Brilli, Lorenzo Carotenuto, Federico Vagnoli, Carolina Zaldei, Alessandro Gioli, Beniamino |
author_sort | Gualtieri, Giovanni |
collection | PubMed |
description | Covid19-induced lockdown measures caused modifications in atmospheric pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. Urban road traffic was the most impacted, with 48–60% average reduction in Italy. This offered an unprecedented opportunity to assess how a prolonged (∼2 months) and remarkable abatement of traffic emissions impacted on urban air quality. Six out of the eight most populated cities in Italy with different climatic conditions were analysed: Milan, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, and Palermo. The selected scenario (24/02/2020–30/04/2020) was compared to a meteorologically comparable scenario in 2019 (25/02/2019–02/05/2019). NO(2), O(3), PM(2.5) and PM(10) observations from 58 air quality and meteorological stations were used, while traffic mobility was derived from municipality-scale big data. NO(2) levels remarkably dropped over all urban areas (from −24.9% in Milan to −59.1% in Naples), to an extent roughly proportional but lower than traffic reduction. Conversely, O(3) concentrations remained unchanged or even increased (up to 13.7% in Palermo and 14.7% in Rome), likely because of the reduced O(3) titration triggered by lower NO emissions from vehicles, and lower NO(x) emissions over typical VOCs-limited environments such as urban areas, not compensated by comparable VOCs emissions reductions. PM(10) exhibited reductions up to 31.5% (Palermo) and increases up to 7.3% (Naples), while PM(2.5) showed reductions of ∼13–17% counterbalanced by increases up to ∼9%. Higher household heating usage (+16–19% in March), also driven by colder weather conditions than 2019 (−0.2 to −0.8 °C) may partly explain primary PM emissions increase, while an increase in agriculture activities may account for the NH(3) emissions increase leading to secondary aerosol formation. This study confirmed the complex nature of atmospheric pollution even when a major emission source is clearly isolated and controlled, and the need for consistent decarbonisation efforts across all emission sectors to really improve air quality and public health. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7500435 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Elsevier Ltd. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-75004352020-09-21 Quantifying road traffic impact on air quality in urban areas: A Covid19-induced lockdown analysis in Italy() Gualtieri, Giovanni Brilli, Lorenzo Carotenuto, Federico Vagnoli, Carolina Zaldei, Alessandro Gioli, Beniamino Environ Pollut Article Covid19-induced lockdown measures caused modifications in atmospheric pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. Urban road traffic was the most impacted, with 48–60% average reduction in Italy. This offered an unprecedented opportunity to assess how a prolonged (∼2 months) and remarkable abatement of traffic emissions impacted on urban air quality. Six out of the eight most populated cities in Italy with different climatic conditions were analysed: Milan, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, and Palermo. The selected scenario (24/02/2020–30/04/2020) was compared to a meteorologically comparable scenario in 2019 (25/02/2019–02/05/2019). NO(2), O(3), PM(2.5) and PM(10) observations from 58 air quality and meteorological stations were used, while traffic mobility was derived from municipality-scale big data. NO(2) levels remarkably dropped over all urban areas (from −24.9% in Milan to −59.1% in Naples), to an extent roughly proportional but lower than traffic reduction. Conversely, O(3) concentrations remained unchanged or even increased (up to 13.7% in Palermo and 14.7% in Rome), likely because of the reduced O(3) titration triggered by lower NO emissions from vehicles, and lower NO(x) emissions over typical VOCs-limited environments such as urban areas, not compensated by comparable VOCs emissions reductions. PM(10) exhibited reductions up to 31.5% (Palermo) and increases up to 7.3% (Naples), while PM(2.5) showed reductions of ∼13–17% counterbalanced by increases up to ∼9%. Higher household heating usage (+16–19% in March), also driven by colder weather conditions than 2019 (−0.2 to −0.8 °C) may partly explain primary PM emissions increase, while an increase in agriculture activities may account for the NH(3) emissions increase leading to secondary aerosol formation. This study confirmed the complex nature of atmospheric pollution even when a major emission source is clearly isolated and controlled, and the need for consistent decarbonisation efforts across all emission sectors to really improve air quality and public health. Elsevier Ltd. 2020-12 2020-09-18 /pmc/articles/PMC7500435/ /pubmed/33254679 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.115682 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Gualtieri, Giovanni Brilli, Lorenzo Carotenuto, Federico Vagnoli, Carolina Zaldei, Alessandro Gioli, Beniamino Quantifying road traffic impact on air quality in urban areas: A Covid19-induced lockdown analysis in Italy() |
title | Quantifying road traffic impact on air quality in urban areas: A Covid19-induced lockdown analysis in Italy() |
title_full | Quantifying road traffic impact on air quality in urban areas: A Covid19-induced lockdown analysis in Italy() |
title_fullStr | Quantifying road traffic impact on air quality in urban areas: A Covid19-induced lockdown analysis in Italy() |
title_full_unstemmed | Quantifying road traffic impact on air quality in urban areas: A Covid19-induced lockdown analysis in Italy() |
title_short | Quantifying road traffic impact on air quality in urban areas: A Covid19-induced lockdown analysis in Italy() |
title_sort | quantifying road traffic impact on air quality in urban areas: a covid19-induced lockdown analysis in italy() |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7500435/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33254679 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.115682 |
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