Emissions Inventory Analysis of Mobile Source Air Pollution in Tel Aviv, Israel

Air pollution from motor vehicles is an acute urban problem in many rapidly developing countries. Air quality monitoring in Israel has both demonstrated the severity of the problem in Israel and identified transportation emissions to be the major contributor to its etiology. Currently, a major concern is the high level of nitrogen oxide nonattainment in Tel Aviv. Thousands of nitrogen oxide violations are recorded there every year. This pollution both affects the local population and provides the driving factor behind the ozone formation downwind in Jerusalem and the West Bank. This paper presents the innovative effort to compile varying streams of data to create an urban vehicle emissions inventory for the city of Tel Aviv. The inventory provides an excellent understanding of the relative contributions of four air pollutants between and within each vehicle cluster. The major findings are that, of total urban vehicle emissions, cars purchased before 1993, when catalytic converters became mandatory, produce 60 percent of carbon monoxide and 55 percent of hydrocarbon emissions. City buses produce 67 percent of nitrogen oxide and 39 percent of particulate matter emissions. Trucks and taxis each contribute about an eighth of total nitrogen oxide and a quarter of total particulate matter emissions. The major policy direction suggested by these findings is diesel fleet vehicle mitigation. In short, an effective approach is presented for industrializing nations to quickly assess their mobile pollution sources, and the foundation data are compiled for further mobilesource analyses in Israel.