Buildings As Sources Of Mercury
To The Atmosphere
Author(s)
G. F. M. Tan, E. Cairnsa, K. Tharumakulasingam,
J. Lu & D. Yap
Abstract
Atmospheric gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) on the streets in the city core at
various heights above ground, in parking lots, and in indoor and outdoor air was
measured in Toronto, the largest city in Canada. The GEM in the indoor air
ranged from 1.15 – 258.4 (average 12.54 ± 11.26) ng m-3 and was much higher
than that in the outdoor air (average 1.89 ± 0.49). The average GEM in
underground parking lots ranged from 1.37 – 7.86 ng m-3 and was higher than
those observed from the surface parking lots. The GEM values increased with
increasing elevation and increasing distance from building walls. All of these
findings suggest that mercury used in the indoor environment has been diffused
and emitted to the outdoor environment, thus, the buildings serve as sources of
mercury of GEM to the urban atmosphere. More studies are needed to estimate
the contribution of urban areas to the atmospheric Hg budget and the impact of
indoor air on outdoor air quality and human health.
Keywords: gaseous elemental mercury, urban atmosphere, source of emission,
depth profiling, Toronto.
1 Introduction
Mercury (Hg) is a persistent and highly toxic element (Sarikaya et al. [1]). It can
be emitted from natural and anthropogenic sources, largely as gaseous elemental
mercury (GEM) (Bagnato et al. [2]; Song et al. [3]; Goodarzi [4]). The
atmosphere receives most of the mercury emitted from these sources (Goodarzi
[4]), thus, it is the major pathway of transporting this toxic element. Elemental
Keywords
gaseous elemental mercury, urban atmosphere, source of emission,
depth profiling, Toronto
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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