Vertical particle concentration profiles around urban office buildings

• Published in: Atmospheric chemistry and physics 2012-06, Vol.12 (11), p.5017-5030
• Main Authors: Quang, T. N, He, C, Morawska, L, Knibbs, L. D, Falk, M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Air pollution; Office buildings
• ISSN: 1680-7324; 1680-7316; 1680-7324
• DOI: 10.5194/acp-12-5017-2012

Despite its role in determining both indoor and outdoor human exposure to anthropogenic particles, there is limited information describing vertical profiles of particle concentrations in urban environments, especially for ultrafine particles. Furthermore, the results of the few studies performed have been inconsistent. As such, this study aimed to assess the influence of vehicle emissions and nucleation formation on particle characteristics (particle number size distribution – PNSD and PM2.5 concentration) at different heights around three urban office buildings located next to busy roads in Brisbane, Australia, and place these results in the broader context of the existing literature. Two sets of instruments were used to simultaneously measure PNSD, particle number (PN) and PM2.5 concentrations, respectively, for up to three weeks at each building. The results showed that both PNSD and PM2.5 concentration around building envelopes were influenced by vehicle emissions and new particle formation, and that they exhibited variability across the three different office buildings. During nucleation events, PN concentration in size range of