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Particle size distribution and air pollution patterns in three urban environments in Xi’an, China

Environmental Geochemistry and Health volume 37, pages 801–812 (2015)Cite this article

Abstract

Three urban environments, office, apartment and restaurant, were selected to investigate the indoor and outdoor air quality as an inter-comparison in which CO2, particulate matter (PM) concentration and particle size ranging were concerned. In this investigation, CO2 level in the apartment (623 ppm) was the highest among the indoor environments and indoor levels were always higher than outdoor levels. The PM10 (333 µg/m3), PM2.5 (213 µg/m3), PM1 (148 µg/m3) concentrations in the office were 10–50 % higher than in the restaurant and apartment, and the three indoor PM10 levels all exceeded the China standard of 150 µg/m3. Particles ranging from 0.3 to 0.4 µm, 0.4 to 0.5 µm and 0.5 to 0.65 µm make largest contribution to particle mass in indoor air, and fine particles number concentrations were much higher than outdoor levels. Outdoor air pollution is mainly affected by heavy traffic, while indoor air pollution has various sources. Particularly, office environment was mainly affected by outdoor sources like soil dust and traffic emission; apartment particles were mainly caused by human activities; restaurant indoor air quality was affected by multiple sources among which cooking-generated fine particles and the human steam are main factors.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the project from Ministry of Science & Technology (2012BAH31B03), "Strategic Priority Research Program" of the Chinese Academy of Science (XDA05100401), Shannxi Government (2012KTZB03-01-01), and the “International (Regional) Cooperation and Exchange Projects, Research Fund for International Young Scientists of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. 41150110474)”.

Author information

Affiliations

  1. School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Xinyi Niu

  2. Observatory Midi-Pyrenees, National Center for Scientific Research, Toulouse, France

    Benjamin Guinot

  3. School of Key Lab of Aerosol Science and Technology, SKLLQG, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, 710075, P.R China

    Xinyi Niu, Benjamin Guinot, Junji Cao & Hongmei Xu

  4. Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Junji Cao

  5. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Hongmei Xu & Jian Sun

Authors
  1. Xinyi Niu
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  2. Benjamin Guinot
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  3. Junji Cao
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  4. Hongmei Xu
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  5. Jian Sun
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Junji Cao.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 3.

Table 3 China national indoor air quality standards
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Niu, X., Guinot, B., Cao, J. et al. Particle size distribution and air pollution patterns in three urban environments in Xi’an, China. Environ Geochem Health 37, 801–812 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-014-9661-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-014-9661-0

Keywords

  • Indoor air quality
  • Carbon dioxide
  • Particle mass
  • Particle size distribution