Assessment of 2-(4-morpholinyl) benzothiazole (24MoBT) and N-cyclohexyl-2-benzothiazolamine (NCBA) as traffic tracers in metropolitan cities of China and India

2-(4-Morpholinyl) benzothiazole (24MoBT) and N-cyclohexyl-2-benzothiazolamine (NCBA), which are present in automobile tires, are impurities of the vulcanisation accelerators OBS and CBS, respectively, as defined by the Japan Industrial Standard. To assess 24MoBT and NCBA as markers to trace the usage patterns of OBS and CBS in developing countries, urban dusts were collected from five representative cities of China and India for the analysis of 24MoBT and NCBA. The concentrations in these dust samples were found to be within the range of 3.40–151 ng g−1 for 24MoBT and nd–56.9 ng g−1 for NCBA. The higher levels of 24MoBT may indicate that the traditional accelerator OBS is still used in vehicle tires, whereas the relatively lower contents of NCBA are mainly related to the lesser use of CBS tires. The individual fractions of 24MoBT and NCBA in BTs (24MoBT + NCBA) are compared among cities, and the results show that the fraction sequence is consistent with the number of vehicles and the citiesʹ economic development. This study indicates not only that 24MoBT is presently more suitable for tracing tire wear emissions than NCBA in China but also that there is a potential to assess the impact of traffic sources on urban environments using BTs.