Atmospheric gaseous aromatic hydrocarbons in eastern China based on mobile measurements: Spatial distribution, secondary formation potential and source apportionment

Monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (MAHs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are both well known as hazardous air pollutants and also important anthropogenic precur-sors of tropospheric ozone (O 3 ) and secondary organic aerosols (SOA). In recent years, there have been intensive studies covering MAHs emission from various sources and their be-havior under stimulated photochemical conditions. Yet in-situ measurements of PAHs pres-ence and variations in ambient air are sparse. Herein we conducted large geometrical scale mobile measurements for 16 aromatic hydrocarbons (AHs, including 7 MAHs and 9 PAHs) in eastern China between October 27 and November 8, 2019. This unique dataset has al-lowed for some insights in terms of AHs concentration variations, accompanying chemi-cal composition, source contributions and spatial distributions in eastern China. In gen-eral, AHs showed a clear concentration variability between the south and the north of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). The concentrations of PAHs were approximately 9% of AHs, but contributed 23% of SOA formation potential. Source apportionment via positive matrix fac-torization (PMF) model revealed that industrial processes as the largest source (44%) of ob-served AHs, followed by solvent usage (21%), vehicle exhaust (19%), coal combustion (11%) and coking processes (6%). In the perspective of PAHs sources, coal combustion emissions were identified as the dominating factor of a share of 41%-52% in eastern China. Our findings complemented the simultaneously monitoring information of PAHs and MAHs in eastern China, revealed the importance of PAHs to SOA formation and highlighted the necessity of formulating strategies to reduce emissions from anthropogenic sources and reduce risks to human health.(c) 2022 The Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V.