Atmospheric Impacts of Volatile Chemical Products (VCP) Emissions on Air Quality in Major U.S. Cities

With traffic emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) decreasing rapidly over the last few decades, the contributions of emissions from other source categories, such as volatile chemical products (VCPs), have become more apparent in urban air. In this work, a unique combination of ground site and mobile laboratory measurements of VOCs, together with boundary layer dynamics measurements, are reported for New York City in 2018, and Las Vegas and Los Angeles in 2021. These measurements demonstrate the importance of VCP emission fluxes in those cities and allow for the verification of VCP emission inventories and regional model validations. In New York City, over two thirds of the anthropogenic VOC emissions were attributed to VCPs, which resulted in more than one third of the anthropogenic ozone formation being attributed to various VCP compounds. VOCs from personal care, cleaning, coatings, and adhesive products were all contributing significantly to ozone formed in and downwind of NYC. In Las Vegas, very high VCP emissions were observed in the downtown area along the Las Vegas Boulevard and also often accumulated during nighttime in the shallow mixing layer. In Los Angeles, mobile laboratory measurements covering the whole LA basin will be compared to the VOC profiles of previous studies such as Calnex2010.