Vertical Distribution of Airborne Particulate Matter in a Tropical Urban Environment: Changes in Physical and Chemical Characteristics

Abstract

Air pollution has become a subject of great interest on the global scale from both the regulatory and the scientific points of view. This is a result of the expanding economies, increasing population and urbanization. Particulate matter pollution has become a serious concern in urban areas due to its adverse impacts on human health (US EPA 2009). Most of the previous studies reported in the literature on particulate air pollution deal with its temporal and spatial distributions as part of routine air quality monitoring (Hitchins et al. 2000; Wu et al. 2002; Levy et al. 2003; Morawska et al. 1999; Zhu et al. 2002), but little work has been done on its vertical distribution in the vicinity of buildings. The horizontal distribution of particles is of interest because it helps town planners to decide on the location of buildings and amenities considering the degree of exposure of occupants to fine and ultra fine particles. In addition to those studies, the vertical distribution of particles also merits consideration because it provides an understanding how particles are distributed with respect to the height of a building so that one can decide on the location of the natural air intake of the building, or the building orientation based on the source of particulate matter pollution.