Particulate pollution levels and source apportionment in six asian cities: Preliminary findings of AIRPET

AIRPET, an Asian regional air pollution research network, which is coordinated by the Asian Institute of Technology, involves six cities: Bandung, Bangkok, Beijing, Chennai, Manila, and Hanoi. One of the objectives of the network is to provide a comprehensive assessment of particulate matter (PM) air quality though monitoring and receptor modeling tools jointly by six research teams in these cities. The results within the scope of this monitoring and modeling objective in phase 1 (2001-2003) were presented. In total, the network collected over 2500 PM2.5 and PM10 samples from characteristic urban sites. In all these cities the levels of PM10 and PM2.5 were found high especially during the dry season which the frequently exceeded the EPA standard for PM10 and PM2.5, especially at the traffic sites. Traffic had the highest PM2.5 contribution in most cities with the exceptional high share (> 70%) in Manila. Traffic and coal combustion had high contribution in Beijing while NaNO3 was found high in Hanoi. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 98th AWMA Annual Conference and Exhibition (Minneapolis, MN 6/21-24/2005).