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. 2021;23(8):12252-12271.
doi: 10.1007/s10668-020-01167-1. Epub 2021 Jan 3.

COVID-19 lockdowns reduce the Black carbon and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of the Asian atmosphere: source apportionment and health hazard evaluation

Balram Ambade  1 , Tapan Kumar Sankar  1 , Amit Kumar  1 , Alok Sagar Gautam  2 , Sneha Gautam  3
Affiliations

COVID-19 lockdowns reduce the Black carbon and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of the Asian atmosphere: source apportionment and health hazard evaluation

Balram Ambade et al. Environ Dev Sustain. 2021.

Abstract

Abstract: The entire world is affected by Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which is spreading worldwide in a short time. India is one of the countries which is affected most, therefore, the Government of India has implemented several lockdowns in the entire country from April 25, 2020. We studied air pollutants (i.e., PM2.5, Black Carbon (BC), and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) level, and observed significantly sudden reduced. In India, most of the anthropogenic activities completely stopped. Therefore, we studied the levels of BC, PAHs and PM2.5 concentrations, their sources apportion, and health risk assessment during normal days, lockdown (from lockdown 1.0 to lockdown 4.0) and unlock down 1.0 situation at Sakchi, Jamshedpur city. It was observed that lockdowns and unlock down situations BC, PAHs and PM2.5 concentrations were significantly lower than regular days. We applied the advanced air mass back trajectory (AMBT) model to locate airborne particulate matter dispersal from different directions to strengthen the new result. The diagnostic ratio analyses of BC shows that wood burning contribution was too high during the lockdown situations. However, during normal days, the PAHs source profile was dedicated toward biomass, coal burning, and vehicle emission as primary sources of PAHs. During the lockdown period, emission from biomass and coal burning was a significant contributor to PAHs. The summaries of health risk assessment of BC quantified an equal number of passively smoked cigarettes (PSC) for an individual situation was studied. This study focuses on the overall climate impact of pandemic situations.

Keywords: Backward trajectory; Black carbon; COVID-19; Health risk assessment; PAHs.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interestThe authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Satellite aerial view of the sampling site at Sakchi, Jamshedpur city
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Time average map of Black carbon surface mass concentration monthly 0.5 × 0.625 deg. [MERRA-2 Model M2TMNXAER v 5.12.4] µg m−3 at three different situations a Normal Days, b Lockdown 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, & 4.0, and c unlock down 1.0
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Mass concentration with stand deviation of PM2.5 and BC at different situations i.e., normal days (ND), lockdown 1.0 (LD 1.0), lockdown 2.0 (LD 2.0), lockdown 3.0 (LD 3.0), lockdown 4.0 (LD 4.0), and unlock down 1.0 (ULD 1.0) at Sakchi, Jamshedpur
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Concentration (ng m−3) of PAHs at three different situations i.e., normal days (ND), lockdown 1.0–4.0 (LD 1-4), and unlock down 1.0 (ULD 1) situations at Sakchi, Jamshedpur
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Fractional contribution of BC measured at 370 nm and 880 nm at six different situations i.e., normal days, lockdown 1.0, lockdown 2.0, lockdown 3.0, lockdown 4.0, and unlock down 1.0-situations at Sakchi, Jamshedpur
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
7-days air mass back trajectories as well as fire count graph on the two different situations a normal days and b different lockdown and unlock down situations, at an altitude level of 500 m above ground level, over the sampling side
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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