Building statistical associations to forecast ethylbenzene levels in European urban-traffic environments.

Ch Vlachokostas, A V Michailidou, D Spyridi, N Moussiopoulos

Laboratory of Heat Transfer and Environmental Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Box 483, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece. vlahoco@aix.meng.auth.gr

Environmental pollution (Barking, Essex : 1987) 2013 Jun

filter terms:

Emission from road traffic has become the most important source of local air pollution in numerous European cities. Epidemiological research community has established consistent associations between traffic-related substances and various health outcomes. Nevertheless, the vast majority of urban areas are characterised by infrastructure's absence to routinely monitor chemical health stressors, such as ethylbenzene. This paper aims at developing and presenting a tractable approach to reliably - and inexpensively - predict ethylbenzene trends in EU urban environments. The establishment of empirical relationships between rarely monitored pollutants such as ethylbenzene and more frequently or usually monitored, such as benzene and CO respectively, may cover the infrastructure's absence and support decision-making. Multiple regression analysis is adopted and the resulting statistical associations are applied to EU cities with available data for validation purposes. The results demonstrate that this approach is capable of capturing ethylbenzene concentration trends and should be considered as complementary to air quality monitoring. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Citation

Ch Vlachokostas, A V Michailidou, D Spyridi, N Moussiopoulos. Building statistical associations to forecast ethylbenzene levels in European urban-traffic environments. Environmental pollution (Barking, Essex : 1987). 2013 Jun;177:125-34