[sustran] Food for thought: Your lungs on a typical work trip in traffic in New Delhi

[eric britton]

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World Streets

             Make it yours 

 



 

 

Good morning Sarath,

 

Kind thanks for sending along that information on the video and paper, which I would like to turn into a very short piece for Worldstreets today, which provides the reader with a brief introduction to the topic and then takes them to both the video and the full paper.

 

I wondered if it might interest you to share a few lines with our readers on this, which I would then intend to follow up with the following abstract of the authors and from hence links to both video and paper.  I can of course write them myself but I think it carries more weight coming from someone with so much impressive hands-on knowledge as you have.

 

And I would have loved to have had a larger high definition version of the above photo, so that we could turn it into the header for the article.

 

Hope this is agreeable to you.

 

With regards/Eric.

 

 

 

Abstract

 

Concentrations of air pollutants from vehicles are elevated along roadways, indicating that human exposure in transportation microenvironments may not be adequately characterized by centrally located monitors. We report results from not, vert, similar180 h of real-time measurements of fine particle and black carbon mass concentration (PM2.5, BC) and ultrafine particle number concentration (PN) inside a common vehicle, the auto-rickshaw, in New Delhi, India. Measured exposure concentrations are much higher in this study (geometric mean for not, vert, similar60 trip-averaged concentrations: 190 μg m−3 PM2.5, 42 μg m−3 BC, 280 × 103 particles cm−3; GSD not, vert, similar1.3 for all three pollutants) than reported for transportation microenvironments in other megacities. In-vehicle concentrations exceeded simultaneously measured ambient levels by 1.5× for PM2.5, 3.6× for BC, and 8.4× for PN. Short-duration peak concentrations (averaging time: 10 s), attributable to exhaust plumes of nearby vehicles, were greater than 300 μg m−3 for PM2.5, 85 μg m−3 for BC, and 650 × 103 particles cm−3 for PN. The incremental increase of within-vehicle concentration above ambient levels—which we attribute to in- and near-roadway emission sources—accounted for 30%, 68% and 86% of time-averaged in-vehicle PM2.5, BC and PN concentrations, respectively. 

 

Based on these results, we estimate that one’s exposure during a daily commute by auto-rickshaw in Delhi is as least as large as full-day exposures experienced by urban residents of many high-income countries. This study illuminates an environmental health concern that may be common in many populous, low-income cities

            

 

    

 

   Eric Britton, Editor / Managing Director

   World Streets / New Mobility Partnerships  

   8, rue Jospeh Bara   75006 Paris France

   Tel. +331 7550 3788   |  editor at newmobility.org   |  Skype: newmobility

 

P Avant d'imprimer, pensez à l'environnement

 

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