How Motor Vehicles Affect Air Pollution in Erzurum Centre?

Abstract

When pollutants in air are high in concentration and in duration air pollution occurs so as to give harm to human beings, animals and plants. The main reason of air pollution is human activities; especially motor vehicles are accepted as the main source of air pollution. The comfort that the technology provides the people makes the motor vehicles an indispensable part of our life, so the number of motor vehicles is increasing day by day. With the increase of vehicles in number, vehicle queues occur on the ways, especially on the signalized junctions. Because of the geographical position of Erzurum, the winters are cold and last long. Also because of the high altitude, in winters the average heat is low and besides that the percentage of O2 falls to 16,5. This causes incomplete combustion both in the stationary combustion processes and in the motor engines. As a result of this the amount of the pollutants like HC and CO is increasing. In this study, the effects of the geographical position and the meteorological peculiarities of Erzurum on the pollutants emitted by motor vehicles are examined. For this the exhaust gaseous emission measurements of 30370 motor vehicles made in various months are inspected statistically. The main result of these statistical analyses is that the pollutants like CO and HC are raising the maximum concentration in the older model vehicles. The main reason of this is the converter usage in the newer model vehicles.