ABSTRACT

This article talks about a study carried out in a bus system (brt) Transmilenio in Bogotá- colombia, in which
emissions of fine particles pm 2.5 ebc and co were measured, the standard emissions of the vehicle were
identified in order to know the concentrations in which passengers are exposed.

● Measurements taken over 11 months covering route, travel time, urban environmental levels and bus
stations
● A daily inhaled dose of 60% for PM 2.5, 1.2 times more than the OMS recommended 25 mg/m3.
● In eBC particles between 79-90%, 52/180 buses dropped a concentration greater than 100 mg/m3
● The relation in the buses is 8:1 for PM 2.5 and 4:1 for CO
● Older buses have a ratio of 11:1 for PM 2.5 and 7:1 for CO, these buses operate with EURO II and III
● This is why emission concentrations are twice as high as those measured in buses running on EURO IV
and higher.

The measurements were made inside an underground bus station, where only BRT buses circulate, and on
board zero-emission electric BRTs, where it was evident that most of the pollution is from diesel BRT bus
exhaust.
INTRODUCTION
Exposure to fine particle pollutants in the air is harmful to health, as it is
estimated that about 17% of the population between 30 and 70 years of age
dies from respiratory diseases caused by air quality. (Krzyżanowski et al.,
2005), which is why it is important to take into account urban travel, as it is
close to the polluting sources and therefore contributes to personal exposure
and combustion-related doses of air pollutants.

Many studies show that passengers of different types of buses are exposed
to higher levels of particles than other people using other means of
transport, so air pollution in microenvironments such as the public transport
system can generate a greater impact on the population according to
displacement and travel times. Among all public transport systems, BRT
shows the greatest growth in emissions. They transport 32 million
passengers per day in 164 cities. (Dekoninck e Int Panis, 2017),
 MATERIALS AND METHODS.
2,1 Study area and data collection
The concentrations of air pollutants were measured in an extension of the
Bogota's transport system Buses of rapid transit (Transmilenio), this
sample covered an area of 113 km of lanes of this system, this system has
grown to about 35.5 million passengers each year reaching 2.4 million
daily trips by 2017. The fleets of this service are old with 37% of the
vehicles between 10 and 17 years of operation.

Return trips were made in the transport system with portable sampling
devices to measure PM2.5, eBC, CO and physical activities, this was done
from the center of the city to one of the 9 portals, characterizing an
average duration of 140 - 160 min, these measurements were made in the
month of February and December 2017, exclusively in the morning hours
between 7 and 10 am and only on weekdays.
 2.2. PM2.5, eBC and CO exposure
measurements

It use some different measurement devices like

Dustrack
Both measure the
particle size but in
different units

Optical Particle Size (OPS)

2.3. Urban ambient eBC estimation
The eBC was not measured by the Bogotá air quality network stations, so they estimated upper and
lower eBC limits to PM2.5 based on different sources.

First a one-year study between 2015-2016 quantified elemental carbon in PM10. Average annual
concentrations were 3.25 - 1.59 µg/m^3, which corresponded to 8.7% of PM10. The maximum daily
concentration was 11.3 µg/m^3 through 308 daily measurements.

With these assumptions the urban environment eBC/PM2.5 is ∼ 17.5%. It is likely that this limit is an
overestimate and, therefore, is repeated as the upper limit of the eBC/PM2.5 ratio in the city.
On the other hand, a second data source was used to estimate a lower limit of the eBC/PM2.5 ratio.
The monthly AE-33 ratio Average PM2.5 data measured at AQ monitoring sites have a maximum
value of 10% for February and November, and a minimum of 5.0% during July and August. The
annual average of eBC/PM2.5 is 8%. Due to the site's location away from traffic sources, this value is
probably an underestimate of the EBC, and is used as a lower boundary estimate of the actual
proportion of the urban environment.
 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
3.1. Exposure concentrations

-In a typical round trip in the system is 1.2 times the dose a subject
would inhale over 24h exposed to WHO guideline of 25ugm-3.
-Measurement show that mean ratio of in-bus to urban ambiente
concentration is 8:1 for PM2.5. Older buses 11:1.
-Extreme cases were found in which average in-cabin concentration
over a 17min trip was 1203ugm-3
 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
3.1. Exposure concentrations

-The National Museum Station

is the most dangerous station
for health.
-Change the Euro II-III for Euro
IV-V would cause a 10%
improvement.
 3.2. Trip contribution to PM2.5 and eBC daily
dose

In this part we can find all mathematical methods to

calculate, concentracion per day of PM 2.5 and eBC daily dosis

PM 2.5 Daily dosis = 460.8 ug/day

eBC Daily dosis = = 174.1 ug/day

This items can change depending de travel time

of BRT
 CONCLUSIONS
The concentration of PM2.5, eBC, CO, and the size distribution of aerosol
particles was measured in micro-environments associated to a Bus Rapid
Transit System in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. Extremely high concentrations
of all the monitored pollutants were observed inside the bus cabins as well as
in the interior of the system stations. The in-bus average concentration was
176 − μg m 3 of PM2.5, 90 − μg m 3 of eBC, and 4.8 ppm of CO. Extreme cases
were observed in which average in-bus concentrations of PM2.5 reached
levels as high as 1200 − μg m 3 , and over 700 − μg m 3 of eBC. The observed
in-bus concentrations were the highest among the micro-environments
considered in this study. Furthermore, the observed concentrations are much
higher than those reported in the available literature
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