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Increasing trend of primary NO2 exhaust emission fraction in Hong Kong

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Abstract

Despite the successful reduction in roadside NO x levels, no such decrease has been detected in roadside NO2 concentration in Hong Kong. One underlying cause could be the rising primary NO2 fraction of the total emission of NO x . Primary NO2 can be particularly detrimental to Hong Kong because a large fraction of the population are exposed to the traffic-related primary pollutants in the street canyons formed by congested high-rise buildings. In this study, hourly mean concentration data for roadside nitrogen oxides (NO x ), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and background ozone (O3) were used to estimate the mean primary NO2 fraction from vehicle exhausts in Hong Kong. An overall increasing trend was observed for the primary NO2 fraction (f-NO2) values in all the three roadside air monitoring sites. The primary NO2 as a fraction of total NO x (f-NO2) increased approximately from 2% in 1998 to 13% in 2008 in Hong Kong. The two particular periods of rising f-NO2 coincided with the two implementation periods of the diesel retrofit programs for the light-duty vehicles and heavy-duty vehicles. Future vehicle emission control strategies should target not only total NO x but also primary NO2. Health benefit or disease burden estimates should be taken into account and updated in the process of policy planning and evaluation.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Environmental Protection Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region for supplying the air monitoring data for this study. We acknowledge the support by the Environmental Conservation Fund (project No. ECF 26_2009). We thank the anonymous reviewers for numerous helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health and Primary Care, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Linwei Tian, Sarah R. Hossain, Hualiang Lin & Ignatius T. S. Yu

  2. Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, Research Center for Environmental Technology and Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

    Kin Fai Ho & Shun Cheng Lee

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  1. Linwei Tian
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  2. Sarah R. Hossain
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  3. Hualiang Lin
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  4. Kin Fai Ho
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  6. Ignatius T. S. Yu
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Correspondence to Linwei Tian.

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Tian, L., Hossain, S.R., Lin, H. et al. Increasing trend of primary NO2 exhaust emission fraction in Hong Kong. Environ Geochem Health 33, 623–630 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-011-9375-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-011-9375-5

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