Inventory of primary emissions of selected persistent organic pollutants to the atmosphere in the area of Great Mendoza

Abstract

The setting up of a country or region-based inventory is considered a crucial step toward the elimination of worldwide persistent organic pollutants (POPs) contamination. Moreover, the need of comparable emission inventories at city or region level is widely recognized to develop evidence-based policies accounting for the relation between emissions and institutional, socio-economic and demographic characteristics at small scale level. Due to the low spatial and temporal resolution of the available measurements, highly variable air concentrations of several POPs have been observed in Latin American and Caribbean countries. This paper presents a high resolution spatially disaggregated atmospheric emission inventory for selected POPs in order to assess the environmental fate of some of these compounds in a finer resolution. As study case we estimated releases to air of POPs in a typical mid-size urban conglomeration in Argentina. Inventoried compounds were total polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), total polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), total dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) on a sum basis, hexachlorobenzene (HCB) and dioxins and furans (PCDD/Fs), for which emissions were estimated in 0.92 kg/year, 1.65 kg/year, 4.2E−02 kg/year (total sum of congeners), 0.86 kg/year and 4.4E−02 kg/year respectively, values that are in accordance with the geographic and economic context. Although emitting sources are quite varied, there are very clear trends, particularly in relation to open burning of municipal solid waste and agrochemical use as major contributors. Overall, the inventory provides valuable data for the analysis of the heterogeneity of POP emissions and the necessary inputs for air quality modeling.