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

S. M. Platt (1) , I. El Haddad (1) , S. M. Pieber (1) , R. -J. Huang (1) , A. A. Zardini (2) , M. Clairotte (3) , R. Suarez-Bertoa (3) , P. Barmet (1) , L. Pfaffenberger , R. Wolf , J. G. Slowik (1) , S. J. Fuller , M. Kalberer (4) , R. Chirico (5) , J. Dommen (5) , C. Astorga (6) , R. Zimmermann , Nicolas Marchand (7) , S. Hellebust (7) , B. Temime-Roussel (7) , U. Baltensperger (5) , A. S. H. Prévôt (5)

1 PSI - Paul Scherrer Institute
2 JRC - European Commission - Joint Research Centre [Ispra]
3 IES - JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability
4 Centre for Atmospheric Science [Cambridge, UK]
5 LAC - Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry [Paul Scherrer Institute]
6 IET - JRC Institute for Energy and Transport
7 LCE - Laboratoire Chimie de l'environnement

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'.

Domaines: Chimie

S. M. Platt, I. El Haddad, S. M. Pieber, R. -J. Huang, A. A. Zardini, et al.. Two-stroke scooters are a dominant source of air pollution in many cities. Nature Communications, 2014, 5, ⟨10.1038/ncomms4749⟩. ⟨hal-01456406⟩