Impact of pollutant emission from motor vehicles on air quality in a city agglomeration

In the large urban areas, in middle latitudes, as in case of Poland, the cause of poor air quality is immission: in winter particulate matter PM10 and PM2.5, in summer - ozone and nitrogen oxides (or nitrogen dioxide). In the whole country, road transport is significantly responsible for the emission of nitrogen oxides (30%), carbon monoxide (20%) and less for emission of particulate matter (a few percent). In the case of other pollutants, the emission of non-metallic organic compounds is less than 10% (including polycyclic organic compounds - just over 0.5%), and sulfur oxides - only 0.03%! To analyze impact of automotive industry on air quality, pollutant emission data from two stations in Krakow were selected. These stations are known for poor air quality - the stations are: Dietla Street - with a high level of traffic and Kurdwanów - place located far from traffic routes. It was found that other objects than automotive vehicles are the dominant source of dust. These are industrial sources and - above all - energy sources, especially individual heating installations. Particularly large dust pollution occurs in winter and it is not always in areas with intense traffic. There was a strong dependence between immission of pollutants and road traffic, however, this dependence is not dominant in assessing the risk of air quality in urban agglomerations.