A review on the effectiveness of street sweeping, washing and dust suppressants as urban PM control methods

Given the absence of a definitive threshold for atmospheric particulate matter (PM)-induced adverse health effects and the evidence of road traffic as a main contributor to PM-urban levels, there is a general agreement in reducing PM-associated health risks by firstly focusing on vehicle traffic sector. Beside the reduction of primary exhaust emissions, recent potential measures are challenging to reduce emissions of particulate matter from abrasion and resuspension processes given the high potential health burden of heavy metals and metalloids sourced by vehicle-wear particles (brakes, tires, rotor, discs and catalysts) and of coarse particles (PM2.5-10). Some mitigating measures can be adopted in order to reduce road dust emissions from paved roads by removing or binding those particles already deposited and easy to be resuspended by traffic-generated turbulence. Sweeping, water flushing and use of chemical suppressants are usually more commonly employed to try to diminish emissions, but evaluating the effectiveness of preventive measures on improving air quality is a difficult task, consequently there is a general dearth of information about their effectiveness in reducing ambient PM concentrations. In particular, the scientific bibliography seems to be particularly scarce, whilst most of the information comes from local authorities committees. Consequently the existing reports are often aimed only to the municipalities and in the native language, with an objective difficulty for the international scientific community to access to them. For this review we have gathered contributions from some of major experts in this field, with the purpose of taking advantage of their background and personal awareness about any kind of related reports even not in English. Furthermore, the results we have gathered are often dissimilar, probably due to the different local conditions (weather, road pavement conditions etc.), therefore another objective of the review is to make a balance of actual knowledge and create a useful reference for future research studies and air quality management. (C) 2010 Elsevier By. All rights reserved.