The main purpose of this project was to investigate environmental pollutants (PM2.5, metals, PAHs, VOCs, and acidic gas) in Taichung City for further health risk assessments. This project was conducted in four parts, as follows: (I) collection and analysis of the ambient air pollutants in Taichung City; (II) exploration of the effects of factors on the concentration variations of pollutants among different sampling sites; (III) use of the AERMOD model to simulate the concentration distribution of metals and VOCs emitted from industrial sources; and (IV) plan the project titled “Health Risk Assessment of Air Pollution in Taichung City in 2018”.
To date, a toxicological data bank of 110 chemical compounds has already been established. We have completed three samplings of PM2.5 and air pollutants, during which various pollutants including metals and PAHs in PM2.5, VOCs, gaseous mercury, and inorganic acids were measured. The number of samples taken for inorganic acids was 72, and 264 samples were taken for other pollutants. We also responded to 150 questions about the results of projects that were completed in 2016 and 2017, which are summarized in the Q＆A report.
In the second part, we conducted data measurements of pollutants in 2016 and 2017 to analyze the distribution of air pollutants in Taichung city. We then explored the influence of wind direction, season, and other factors on the concentration variations of pollutants. We also compared the differences in the concentrations of carcinogens in the gas and solid phases.
In the third part, we collected data on metals and VOCs from industrial emissions and compared the observed data from the model with real samples. Most of the model results were less than 10%of the real sample.
In the last part, further schemes of this project, which will be executed in 2018, were proposed in this study, including background risk assessments, as based on the measurement of pollutant concentrations in situ, and incremental risk assessments, as based on emissions from industrial sources. To make up for the deficiency of data in the previous two-year survey, the samplings from 41 stations will be executed one time, while the five representative stations will be sampled five times.
