Research on the air pollution spreading from activities of motor vehicles to residential areas at the Lang - Lang Ha interchange

Abstract

According to Hanoi city’s master plan for transportation by 2030 with a vision to 2050 approved by the Prime Minister, Hanoi will renovate and build 185 new interchanges. The construction of interchanges will reduce traffic conflicts, and partly limit traffic congestion and accidents. However, the formation of traffic flows at different elevations will aggravate environmental pollution problems from the operation of motor vehicles. This research was conducted to assess the current situation of traffic operation at the Lang Ha - Lang interchange. The results show that this is an area with a large number of vehicles, the direction of the vehicles is quite complicated with pollution sources at different elevations, which causes the pollution to spread further. The residential area near this interchange has the amount of dust, SO2, and VOC exceeding the standards. Calculation results show that the dust pollution level during rush hours in the morning and afternoon both exceeds QCVN 05:2023/BTNMT (0.3 mg/Nm3) with the highest level exceeding 100 times. With the regulation on SO2 content in the air being 0.35 mg/Nm3, in the locations 90m far from the source, SO2 content still exceeds the regulation (the lowest value is 1.06 mg/ Nm3 in the morning and 0.54 mg/ Nm3 in the afternoon). Similarly, the VOC concentration measured at a distance of 80m far from the source reached the value from 852.44 mg/ Nm3 and a maximum value of 3072.34 mg/ Nm3. This is a concentration that is harmful to human health if being exposed for a long time.

Keywords: air pollution, SO2, dust, VOC, traffic, interchange.