title: Monitoring intraurban spatial patterns of multiple combustion air pollutants in New York City: design and implementation.
abstract: Routine air monitoring provides data to assess urban scale temporal variation in pollution concentrations in relation to regulatory standards, but is not well suited to characterizing intraurban spatial variation in pollutant concentrations from local sources. To address these limitations and inform local control strategies, New York City developed a program to track spatial patterns of multiple air pollutants in each season of the year. Monitor locations include 150 distributed street-level sites chosen to represent a range of traffic, land-use and other characteristics. Integrated samples are collected at each distributed site for one 2-week session each season and in every 2-week period at five reference locations to track city-wide temporal variation. Pollutants sampled include PM(2.5) and constituents, nitrogen oxides, black carbon, ozone (summer only) and sulfur dioxide (winter only). During the first full year of monitoring more than 95% of designed samples were completed. Agreement between colocated samples was good (absolute mean % difference 3.2-8.9%). Street-level pollutant concentrations spanned a much greater range than did concentrations at regulatory monitors, especially for oxides of nitrogen and sulfur dioxide. Monitoring to characterize intraurban spatial gradients in ambient pollution usefully complements regulatory monitoring data to inform local air quality management.
authors: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York, NY, USA. tmatte@health.nyc.gov
authors: Thomas D
authors: TD
authors: Matte
authors: Zev
authors: Z
authors: Ross
authors: Iyad
authors: I
authors: Kheirbek
authors: Holger
authors: H
authors: Eisl
authors: Sarah
authors: S
authors: Johnson
authors: John E
authors: JE
authors: Gorczynski
authors: Daniel
authors: D
authors: Kass
authors: Steven
authors: S
authors: Markowitz
authors: Grant
authors: G
authors: Pezeshki
authors: Jane E
authors: JE
authors: Clougherty
mesh_terms: D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D009519:New York City; D014505:Urban Population
chemical_list: D000393:Air Pollutants