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Particulate Pb emission factors from wildland fires in the United States
Citation:
Holder, A., V. Rao, K. Kovalcik, AND Pertti Virtaranta. Particulate Pb emission factors from wildland fires in the United States. Atmospheric Environment: X. Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam, Netherlands, , 0, (2023).
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of this manuscript is to report emission factors for lead (Pb) in fine particulate matter (PM) emitted from wildland fires. Wildland fires are a major source of PM to the atmosphere many years and is expected to increase with climate change. Despite Pb being present at very low concentrations in wildland fire PM, the large emissions from fires can result in sizeable Pb emissions. Past measurements of Pb in wildland fire smoke exhibited a range of nearly four orders of magnitude making it challenging to develop emission estimates. This work used a highly sensitive analytical method to robustly measure low concentrations of Pb in samples from field and laboratory simulations of wildland fires using fuels sourced from different parts of the US.
Description:
Wildland fires, which includes both wild and prescribed fires, and agricultural fires in sum is one of the largest sources of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions to the atmosphere in the United States. Although wildland fire PM2.5 emissions are primarily composed of carbonaceous material, many other elements including trace metals are emitted at very low levels. Lead (Pb) is an EPA criteria pollutant that is ubiquitous in the environment at very low concentrations including in biomass that can burn and emit Pb into the atmosphere. Although fires may emit Pb at very low concentrations, they can be a source sizeable Pb emissions to the atmosphere because of the large quantity of PM2.5 emitted from fires. In this work we measure Pb concentrations in unburned biomass, ash/residues, and PM2.5 emitted from wildland fires using in-field measurements near prescribed fires and in laboratory simulations. Emission factors were calculated for multiple biomass types, representative of different regions of the US including grasslands in Oregon and Kansas; forest litter from Oregon, Montana, Minnesota, and North Carolina; and peat cores from Minnesota. Most of the biomass Pb remains in the ash/residues. The small percentage (<10%) that is emitted in PM2.5 is dependent on the biomass Pb concentration. The emissions factors measured here are several orders of magnitude lower than some reported in the literature, but the studies exhibited a wide range of values, which may be due to large uncertainties in the measurement method rather than differences in Pb emissions. Wildland fires are expected to increase in size and frequency in future years and these new emission factors can be used to improve the accuracy of Pb emissions estimates and better constrain our understanding of Pb emissions to the atmosphere.
