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Large-Scale Spraying of Roads with Water Contributes to, Rather Than Prevents, Air Pollution

Spraying roads with water on a large scale in Chinese cities is one of the supplementary precaution or mitigation actions implemented to control severe air pollution events or heavy haze-fog events in which the mechanisms causing them are not yet fully understood. These air pollution events were usu...

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Autores principales: Tan, Fengzhu, Guo, Yuming, Zhang, Wei, Xu, Xingyan, Zhang, Ming, Meng, Fan, Liu, Sicen, Li, Shanshan, Morawska, Lidia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8229925/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34071566
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/toxics9060122
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author Tan, Fengzhu
Guo, Yuming
Zhang, Wei
Xu, Xingyan
Zhang, Ming
Meng, Fan
Liu, Sicen
Li, Shanshan
Morawska, Lidia
author_facet Tan, Fengzhu
Guo, Yuming
Zhang, Wei
Xu, Xingyan
Zhang, Ming
Meng, Fan
Liu, Sicen
Li, Shanshan
Morawska, Lidia
author_sort Tan, Fengzhu
collection PubMed
description Spraying roads with water on a large scale in Chinese cities is one of the supplementary precaution or mitigation actions implemented to control severe air pollution events or heavy haze-fog events in which the mechanisms causing them are not yet fully understood. These air pollution events were usually characterized by higher air humidity. Therefore, there may be a link between this action and air pollution. In the present study, the impact of water spraying on the PM(2.5) concentration and humidity in air was assessed by measuring chemical composition of the water, undertaking a simulated water spraying experiment, measuring residues and analyzing relevant data. We discovered that spraying large quantities of tap or river water on the roads leads to increased PM(2.5) concentration and humidity, and that daily continuous spraying produces a cumulative effect on air pollution. Spraying the same amount of water produces greater increases in humidity and PM(2.5) concentration during cool autumn and winter than during hot summer. Our results demonstrate that spraying roads with water increases, rather than decreases, the concentration of PM(2.5) and thus is a new source of anthropogenic aerosol and air pollution. The higher vapor content and resultant humidity most likely create unfavorable meteorological conditions for the dispersion of air pollution in autumn and winter with low temperature.
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spelling pubmed-82299252021-06-26 Large-Scale Spraying of Roads with Water Contributes to, Rather Than Prevents, Air Pollution Tan, Fengzhu Guo, Yuming Zhang, Wei Xu, Xingyan Zhang, Ming Meng, Fan Liu, Sicen Li, Shanshan Morawska, Lidia Toxics Article Spraying roads with water on a large scale in Chinese cities is one of the supplementary precaution or mitigation actions implemented to control severe air pollution events or heavy haze-fog events in which the mechanisms causing them are not yet fully understood. These air pollution events were usually characterized by higher air humidity. Therefore, there may be a link between this action and air pollution. In the present study, the impact of water spraying on the PM(2.5) concentration and humidity in air was assessed by measuring chemical composition of the water, undertaking a simulated water spraying experiment, measuring residues and analyzing relevant data. We discovered that spraying large quantities of tap or river water on the roads leads to increased PM(2.5) concentration and humidity, and that daily continuous spraying produces a cumulative effect on air pollution. Spraying the same amount of water produces greater increases in humidity and PM(2.5) concentration during cool autumn and winter than during hot summer. Our results demonstrate that spraying roads with water increases, rather than decreases, the concentration of PM(2.5) and thus is a new source of anthropogenic aerosol and air pollution. The higher vapor content and resultant humidity most likely create unfavorable meteorological conditions for the dispersion of air pollution in autumn and winter with low temperature. MDPI 2021-05-28 /pmc/articles/PMC8229925/ /pubmed/34071566 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/toxics9060122 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Tan, Fengzhu
Guo, Yuming
Zhang, Wei
Xu, Xingyan
Zhang, Ming
Meng, Fan
Liu, Sicen
Li, Shanshan
Morawska, Lidia
Large-Scale Spraying of Roads with Water Contributes to, Rather Than Prevents, Air Pollution
title Large-Scale Spraying of Roads with Water Contributes to, Rather Than Prevents, Air Pollution
title_full Large-Scale Spraying of Roads with Water Contributes to, Rather Than Prevents, Air Pollution
title_fullStr Large-Scale Spraying of Roads with Water Contributes to, Rather Than Prevents, Air Pollution
title_full_unstemmed Large-Scale Spraying of Roads with Water Contributes to, Rather Than Prevents, Air Pollution
title_short Large-Scale Spraying of Roads with Water Contributes to, Rather Than Prevents, Air Pollution
title_sort large-scale spraying of roads with water contributes to, rather than prevents, air pollution
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8229925/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34071566
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/toxics9060122
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