title: Decreasing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons emission from bitumen using alternative bitumen production process.
abstract: In 1988, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommended that bitumen fumes should also be considered a potential occupational carcinogen and management practices such as engineering controls should be implemented. Changing the production process of bitumen, as a source control method, was investigated in our study. For the first time, a novel alternative process was used to produce paving grade bitumen with decreased PAH emissions as well as improved bitumen performance grade (PG). Post-consumer latex and natural bitumen (NB) were used as additives to obtain 60/70 modified bitumen directly from the vacuum bottom (VB) without any need for air-blowing. The emissions were produced by a laboratory fume generation rig and were sampled and analyzed by GC-Mass and GC-FID as described in NIOSH method 5515. The PG of the resulting modified 60/70 bitumen in this study covers a wider range of climatic conditions and has higher total resistance against deformation than conventional 60/70 bitumen. The total PAH emissions from modified 60/70 bitumen (100.2619 ng/g) were decreased approximately to 50% of PAHs emitted from conventional 60/70 bitumen (197.696 ng/g). Therefore, it is possible to obtain modified bitumen with lower PAH emissions and better quality than conventional bitumen via additives and without air-blowing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Occupational Health, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, PO Box 5166614711, Tabriz, Iran.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Rasoulzadeh
authors.forename: S B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Mortazavi
authors.forename: A A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Yousefi
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Khavanin
mesh_terms: D006838:Hydrocarbons / Q000737:chemistry*; D011083:Polycyclic Compounds / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D006838:Hydrocarbons; D011083:Polycyclic Compounds; C006647:asphalt