Project Description

Investigating the effects of air pollution policies on PM levels, physicochemical properties and trends

Description

The CAIAC project aims at investigating the effects of air pollution policies on PM levels, physicochemical properties and trends. The major focus of the project is on carbonaceous compounds, including BC, OA and SOA, measured at two background measurement sites in NE Spain, namely: Barcelona (UB) and Montseny (RB). The main objectives of the CAIAC projects are the study of the trends of both PM2.5 chemical speciated data and PM2.5 sources, the study of the SOA-VOCs-O3 system in NE Spain, the study of the health effects of PM sources, including OA sources, and metals, and the study of the optical properties and climate effects of carbonaceous compounds as BC and brown carbon (BrC). Concerning the health effects the novelty of CAIAC resides in the determination of the oxidative stress of SOA and OA sources (HOA, BBOA, …) and in the analysis of the short term associations between the aforementioned sources and mortality. Concerning the climate effects of carbonaceous compounds, the novelty is that CAIAC provides for the first time in the Western Mediterranean Basin an in-deep analysis of the BC absorption enhancement and of the sources of BrC and their optical properties.

Contact: Xavier Querol | Marco Pandolfi