Changing Characteristics of PAH Pollutants in the Aerosols in the Zhongguancun Area of Beijing During the 29th Olympic Games and Winter 2008

The Beijing municipal government enforced the "odd-even" day automobile traffic restriction during the 29 Beijing Olympic Games in order to improve Beijing\´s air quality during the Games. We sampled aerosols in the Zhongguancun area of Beijing before (July), during (August), and after the Games (September) and determined the concentrations of saturated hydrocarbons, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), and NSO-heteroatom compounds in the aerosols. The concentrations of organic pollutants decreased significantly during the traffic control period. The average concentration of total organic pollutants during Olympics was approximately 1/7 of that before the Olympics, 1/5 after Olympic Games, and 1/20 during the winter 2008. Interestingly, only bitumen and the NSO compounds showed reduced concentrations, and the relative concentrations of PAHs and saturated hydrocarbons increased. It show that organic pollutants in winter mainly come from the incomplete combustion of coal, coal-fired has decisive effect to Atmospheric pollution, but a substantial part come from emissions of vehicle exhaust. Therefore, the governance of organic pollutants in Beijing, the most important is to improve the fuel structure. We can find that content of PAHs in the atmosphere is much lower than before, the quality of atmosphere has been greatly improved by the Olympics renovating project for air.