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Two-stroke scooters are a dominant source of air pollution in many cities.


Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Platt, SM 
Haddad, I El 
Pieber, SM 
Huang, R-J 
Zardini, AA 

Abstract

Fossil fuel-powered vehicles emit significant particulate matter, for example, black carbon and primary organic aerosol, and produce secondary organic aerosol. Here we quantify secondary organic aerosol production from two-stroke scooters. Cars and trucks, particularly diesel vehicles, are thought to be the main vehicular pollution sources. This needs re-thinking, as we show that elevated particulate matter levels can be a consequence of 'asymmetric pollution' from two-stroke scooters, vehicles that constitute a small fraction of the fleet, but can dominate urban vehicular pollution through organic aerosol and aromatic emission factors up to thousands of times higher than from other vehicle classes. Further, we demonstrate that oxidation processes producing secondary organic aerosol from vehicle exhaust also form potentially toxic 'reactive oxygen species'.

Description

Keywords

Aerosols, Air Pollution, Asia, Cities, Europe, Fossil Fuels, Humans, Motorcycles, Particulate Matter, Reactive Oxygen Species, Vehicle Emissions

Journal Title

Nat Commun

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723
2041-1723

Volume Title

5

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
This work was supported by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), the Federal Roads Office (FEDRO), the Swiss National Science Foundation (Ambizione PZ00P2_131673, SAPMAV 200021_13016), the EU commission (FP7, COFUND: PSI-Fellow, grant agreement n.° 290605), the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME, Grant number 1162C00O2) and the Velux Foundation.