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Abstract
The goal of this study is to demonstrate that it is possible to construct a two-stage
dispersion model empirically for the purpose of estimating air pollution levels in
the vicinity of petrochemical plants. We studied oil refineries and coal-fired power
plants in the No. 6 Naphtha Cracking Complex, an area of 2,603-ha situated on the
central west coast of Taiwan. The pollutants targeted were vanadium (V) from oil refineries
and arsenic (As) from coal-fired power plants. We applied a backward fitting method
to determine emission rates of V and As, with 192 PM10 filters originally collected
between 2009 and 2012. Our first-stage model estimated emission rates of V and As
(median and 95% confidence intervals at 0.0202 (0.0040-0.1063) and 0.1368 (0.0398-0.4782)
g/s, respectively. In our second stage model, the predicted zone-average concentrations
showed a strong correlation with V, but a poor correlation with As. Our findings show
that two-stage dispersion models are relatively precise for estimating V levels at
residents' addresses near the petrochemical complex, but they did not work as well
for As levels. In conclusion, our model-based approach can be widely used for modeling
exposure to air pollution from industrial areas in countries with limited resources.