Air pollution by resuspended particulate matter: conditioning physical factors in urban areas

Objective: Identify and describe physical factors (FF) conditioning the resuspension of particulate matter (RPM) in road environments and their possible influence on urban air quality. Methodology: the literature review was conducted in ScienceDirect, Taylor Francis, Springer and Scopus databases between the years 1990-2017. The order of importance for the FFs was established by a citation frequency index (Q). The conditioning FFs identified were as follows: dust road particle size (Q1 =3D 0.842), vehicle traffic (Q2 =3D 0.742) and traffic composition (Q2 =3D 0.630). Results: the results showed that on urban roads there were potential resuspension particles between \u3c0.25-10 μm and its main sources of emission in order of importance were as follows: deposited road sediment (18.8%), tyre wear (2.5%), brake wear (2.5%) and pavement wear (1.30%). A linear relationship (R2 = 3D 0.531) was identified between vehicle traffic density (veh./h) and PM10 concentration (μg/m3). Regarding the traffic composition, on average, the highest emission factors for RPM were associated with heavy-duty vehicles (1016 mg/VKT) in relation to light-duty vehicles (53.4 mg/VKT) and motorcycles (3.95 mg/VKT). Finally, this review showed that Europe, Asia and North America registered the highest amount of studies on PMR (92.2%) while in Latin America these were scarce (7.80%)