Road dust is a major source for airborne particulate matter (PM). It is an agglomerate of deposited particles from vehicle exhaust, tire wear, break-lining wear, road surface and litter abrasions, local soil dust, vegetative detritus, and atmospheric fallout from many sources. Consequently, road dust is a mixture of coarse PM (road surface abrasions, soil dust, tire wear, and brake-lining wear) and fine PM (vehicular exhaust and portions of most sources of coarse PM). Although most studies concerned with road dust report the inorganic composition, only a few focus on organic constituents. Here, as part of the San Joaquin Valley Fugitive Dust Characterization Study, road dust samples from paved and unpaved urban and rural roads have been analyzed for close to 200 individual organic compounds, including n-alkanes, n-alkanoic and alkenoic acids, n-alkanols, n-alkanals, n-alkan-2-ones, alkylcyclohexanes, steroids, steranes, hopanes, triterpenoids, isoprenoids, benzothiazoles, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, saccharides, pesticides, plasticizers, and diphenylamines. Organic compounds indicative of both higher plant detritus and traffic-related emissions (exhaust plus tire wear) are highest in paved road dust, suggesting that the grinding of plant detritus by vehicle tires on the hard paved surface liberate natural lipids and other natural occurring compounds that then admix with the road dust and can become airborne. Fossil fuel combustion markers such as hopanes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are highest for most paved roads and farming staging areas and lowest for unpaved roads. The highest level of vehicular exhaust organics associated with road dust was found in rural paved road dust. Rural roads compared with urban roads are typically not swept and have lower traffic density and as a result lower traffic induced resuspension. Consequently, vehicular exhaust deposited onto paved roads is more likely to accumulate on rural roads than on urban roads.
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