The impact of local fugitive PM10 from building works and road works on the assessment of the European Union Limit Value

In Europe, air quality Limit Values have been established for PM10. In this study we determined the impact of PM10 arising from a range building works and road works at over 80 monitoring sites in and around London during the period 1999 to 2001. Examination of PM10 measurements suggests that these local fugitive sources may have been responsible for daily mean concentrations above at 25% of the monitoring sites each year. PM10 source apportionment was used to show that building works and road works close to monitoring sites can cause daily mean measurements of PM10 to exceed and may therefore contribute to a breach of the European Union (EU) Limit Value. In one case, building works close to the Marylebone Road monitoring site caused the daily mean PM10 concentration to exceed on 24 days between June and December 1999. In the future, such local fugitive sources will play a greater role in the attainment of the Limit Value as PM10 from primary and secondary sources is reduced by control measures. Given that PM10 from building works and road works have only a local impact it would be misleading to imply that a city, agglomeration or region has exceeded the EU Limit value on the basis of this type of local incident.