Research Information System
6th International Eurasian Conference on Science, Engineering and Technology , Ankara, Turkey, 25 - 27 June 2025, pp.40, (Summary Text)
Outdoor (also known as ambient) air pollution is a major environmental and public health concern, affecting millions of people worldwide. It also plays a significant role in climate change by altering atmospheric composition and radiative forcing. Outdoor air pollution arises from both natural and anthropogenic sources, including industrial emissions, vehicular exhaust, biomass burning, and natural dust. In a broader perspective, air pollutants can be classified as gaseous pollutants (e.g. CO, SO2, NO2, VOCs and O3) and suspended particles. Suspended particles, also known as Particulate matter (PM), is composed of a heterogeneous mixture of tiny liquid droplets and solid particles. Therefore, PM is considered as a complex mixture with variable and dynamic chemical composition and physical characteristics. In general PM is classified based on its size: PM₂.₅ (particles with diameters ≤ 2.5 µm) and PM₁₀ (particles with diameters ≤ 10 µm). Many of the individual species and mixtures present in PM have been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as Group 1 “carcinogenic to humans” (e.g. benzene, benzo[a]pyrene, chromium (VI), diesel particulate matter, and dioxin) and Group 2A “probably carcinogenic” carcinogens. Therefore, monitoring and evaluation of PM chemical composition is very important in terms of public health concern. In this study, the health risk of PM10 due to diesel particulate matter (DPM) was assessed using elemental carbon (EC) as surrogate of DPM measurements. Outdoor EC concentrations in daily PM10 samples (collected on quartz filters by a high-volume sampler between 2023 and 2024 years) were determined by the thermal-optical methods. DPM concentrations were calculated and accepted as the ambient DPM concentration assuming EC concentration contributes to 50-85% of the total DPM mass. Using USEPA risk assessment methodology and exposure to outdoor concentrations over a lifetime of 70 years, the cancer risk due to inhalation of DPM have been quantified between 9.90x10-5 and 1.91x10-4 for the Artvin city. This preliminary study showed that the cancer risk threshold of 10⁻⁶ has been exceeded when EC was used as surrogate for DPM.