On top of looming tougher pollution rules for sport utility vehicles and other popular vehicles, an environmental engineer here now has devised a new measurement that is likely to have a future impact on air pollution measures and standards nationwide. Jay R. Turner, D.Sc., assistant professor of chemical engineering and civil engineering and director of the University's Air Quality Laboratory, has performed an ambitious study of vehicular emissions in the St. Louis region, measuring particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. So much for fresh country air.
Road dust is more than the simple dirt a vehicle stirs up as it moves along the road.
Besides dirt from soil, road dust also contains the suspended fine particulate matter created from tail pipe emissions. Upper respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular diseases such as arrhythmia, and cancer increasingly are being linked to road dust and other vehicular particulate matter. Turner and his students used particulate matter samplers that pull air through filters, measuring the mass of the filters before and after the sampling. They concentrated on Interstate 40, which runs through the heart of St. Louis, and Interstate 55 in Madison County, Ill., some 30 miles northeast of St. Louis. The results of the study, which was funded in part by the EPA, were published in the Journal of Air and Waste Management Association.