Ambient Benzene Concentrations in Jacksonville, Florida

摘要

In 1997 the City of Jacksonville, Florida’s Environmental Quality Division (EQD) began ambient air monitoring for air toxics using EPA Method TO-15 for the measurement of thirtyeight organic pollutants. Twenty-six of these pollutants are identified on EPA’s list of 188 Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) according to the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Air toxics monitoring is conducted using a mobile monitoring laboratory and at five stationary air toxics monitoring sites. Recently there has been a notable increase in the annual average concentration of many of the monitored pollutants. Of particular interest was an increase in concentrations of benzene. Benzene concentrations continued to increase every year from 1997 through 2004 with the largest increases from 2000 to 2001 and 2002 to 2003. Benzene concentrations above health benchmarks were found at two mobile laboratory air toxic monitoring sites in 2003 and at one mobile laboratory and one stationary site in 2004. Emission inventory data indicates the majority of benzene emissions are from mobile sources. Other sources of benzene are area sources and some point sources such as prescribed burning, gasoline use, degreasing, petroleum product storage and surface coating. In this paper benzene concentrations are compared with vehicle miles traveled to determine if there is a correlation with increasing motor vehicle traffic. Also, current programs to control benzene emissions are examined as well as future programs which are expected to reduce benzene emissions.