The Relative Importance of Air Pollution Sources to the Population Exposure in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Abstract:

Emissions from vehicles, cars, trucks, industries and home cooking are potential sources for air pollution in Hochiminh City (HCMC) Vietnam. Many of the sources have limited air emission control systems as well as poor maintenance.A “bottom-up” detailed emission inventory has been developed for HCMC based on the NILU developed AirQUIS emission model. Evaluations of emission factors for some of the sources have been important in the total evaluation process. Dispersion models linked to population distribution information were used to estimate the exposure to people from individual source groups. The relative importance of the different sources has further been estimated based on total exposure evaluations. The results indicate that heavy traffic and trucks are contributing to the total population exposure to a larger extent than anticipated from the distribution of vehicles. Based on the total traffic work performed by different types of vehicles, we have also estimated the relative importance of greenhouse gas emissions from the different sources in HCMC.