title: Commuter exposure to inhalable, thoracic and alveolic particles in various transportation modes in Delhi.
abstract: A public health concern is to understand the linkages between specific pollution sources and adverse health impacts. Commuting can be viewed as one of the significant-exposure activity in high-vehicle density areas. This paper investigates the commuter exposure to inhalable, thoracic and alveolic particles in various transportation modes in Delhi, India. Air pollution levels are significantly contributed by automobile exhaust and also in-vehicle exposure can be higher sometime than ambient levels. Motorcycle, auto rickshaw, car and bus were selected to study particles concentration along two routes in Delhi between Kashmere Gate and Dwarka. The bus and auto rickshaw were running on compressed natural gas (CNG) while the car and motorcycle were operated on gasoline fuel. Aerosol spectrometer was employed to measure inhalable, thoracic and alveolic particles during morning and evening rush hours for five weekdays. From the study, we observed that the concentration levels of these particles were greatly influenced by transportation modes. Concentrations of inhalable particles were found higher during morning in auto rickshaw (332.81 ± 90.97 μg/m(3)) while the commuter of bus exhibited higher exposure of thoracic particles (292.23 ± 110.45 μg/m(3)) and car commuters were exposed to maximum concentrations of alveolic particles (222.37 ± 26.56 μg/m(3)). We observed that in evening car commuters experienced maximum concentrations of all sizes of particles among the four commuting modes. Interestingly, motorcycle commuters were exposed to lower levels of inhalable and thoracic particles during morning and evening hours as compared to other modes of transport. The mean values were found greater than the median values for all the modes of transport suggesting that positive skewed distributions are characteristics of naturally occurring phenomenon.
authors.affiliation: University School of Environment Management, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Sector -16C, Dwarka, New Delhi 110078, India.
authors.forename: Pramod
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.affiliation: University School of Environment Management, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Sector -16C, Dwarka, New Delhi 110078, India. Electronic address: ncgupta.ip@gmail.com.
authors.forename: N C
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Gupta
mesh_terms: D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis; D000397:Air Pollution / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D019570:Inhalation Exposure / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D018986:Motor Vehicles / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D052638:Particulate Matter / Q000032:analysis; D014186:Transportation / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D001335:Vehicle Emissions / Q000032:analysis
chemical_list: D000393:Air Pollutants; D052638:Particulate Matter; D001335:Vehicle Emissions
keywords: Aerosol; Automobile exhaust; Commuter; In-vehicle exposure; Particulates