Assessment of Airborne Toxic Metals at an Environmental Justice Community in Wilmington, Delaware
Abstract
Exposure to particulate matter containing toxic metal species can have negative health implications. The community of Eden Park, Delaware, is surrounded by numerous industrial facilities, the Port of Wilmington, and a highly trafficked freeway. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Justice (EJ) EJScreen tool ranks the community in the 88th percentile nationally for cancer risk from air toxics and the 90th percentile for PM2.5 exposure. We used hourly metal measurements from an Xact 625i, as well as measurements of meteorology, black carbon, PM10, PM2.5, NOx, and SO2, to determine the ambient concentrations of metallic toxic air pollutants and to apportion their sources. With Positive Matrix Factorization, three sources were identified: soil/dust, concrete manufacturing dust, and brake wear. We found that transient concentration events, where arsenic, lead, chromium and nickel concentrations were more than an order of magnitude larger than the study average, occurred intermittently. During periods of moderate air quality, concrete dust contributes 32% to PM10 concentrations, while soil/dust contributes 12%. Overall, local industry and intermodal traffic emissions are large contributors to air pollution in the community; however, transient, high concentration events from other sources are also important.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.A21G2644R
- Keywords:
-
- 0305 Aerosols and particles;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0317 Chemical kinetic and photochemical properties;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0345 Pollution: urban and regional;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0365 Troposphere: composition and chemistry;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE