Impact of Road Fugitive Dust on Air Quality in Beijing, China

An integrated Advanced Regional Prediction System-Community Multiscale Air Quality modeling system was employed to investigate the PM10 air pollution issue in Beijing, China, with a focus on assessing contributions from road fugitive dust (RFD). A two-level nested grid domain with spatial resolutions of 12 and 4 km was designed for the study region, and the months of January, April, July, and October in 2006 were taken as target periods for the model simulations. The RFD emission inventory for 2006 base year was developed and provided to the Advanced Regional Prediction System-Community Multiscale Air Quality modeling system to quantitatively assess the PM10 contributions from RFD in Beijing. Further, both baseline and attainment scenarios in 2010 were designed and run to show the RFD impacts on the PM10 air quality in Beijing. Results show that, independent of the total PM10 mass in Beijing, the absolute contribution of RFD to the total PM10 is around 36%. Variations in the PM10 concentrations are mainly caused by regional and local meteorological effects. Based on scenario analysis, if there are no further control measures on the RFD emissions, under the same meteorological conditions of the year 2006, the number of days when Beijing's air quality is at polluted level will increase from 56 days in 2006 to 82 days in 2010 (+21%). On the other hand, when control measures are carried out, the days will decrease from 56 days in 2006 to 45 days in 2010 (-9%), although the number of vehicles and road length will also be increased at that time. It can be concluded that the RFD control might be an effective way to reduce PM pollution in Beijing.