Impact of Desert Dust on Air Quality: What is the Meaningfulness of Daily PM Standards in Regions Close to the Sources? The Example of Southern Tunisia
Christel Bouet,
Mohamed Taieb Labiadh,
Jean Louis Rajot,
Gilles Bergametti,
Béatrice Marticorena,
Thierry Henry des Tureaux,
Mohsen Ltifi,
Saâd Sekrafi,
Anaïs Féron
Affiliations
Christel Bouet
iEES Paris (Institut d’Ecologie et des Sciences de l’Environnement de Paris), UMR IRD 242, Université Paris Est Créteil—Sorbonne Université—CNRS—INRA—Université de Paris, F-93143 Bondy, France
Mohamed Taieb Labiadh
IRA (Institut des Régions Arides) de Médenine, El Fjé 4119, Tunisia
Jean Louis Rajot
iEES Paris (Institut d’Ecologie et des Sciences de l’Environnement de Paris), UMR IRD 242, Université Paris Est Créteil—Sorbonne Université—CNRS—INRA—Université de Paris, F-93143 Bondy, France
Gilles Bergametti
LISA (Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques), UMR CNRS 7583, Université Paris Est Créteil—Université de Paris, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, F-94010 Créteil, France
Béatrice Marticorena
LISA (Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques), UMR CNRS 7583, Université Paris Est Créteil—Université de Paris, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, F-94010 Créteil, France
Thierry Henry des Tureaux
iEES Paris (Institut d’Ecologie et des Sciences de l’Environnement de Paris), UMR IRD 242, Université Paris Est Créteil—Sorbonne Université—CNRS—INRA—Université de Paris, F-93143 Bondy, France
Mohsen Ltifi
IRA (Institut des Régions Arides) de Médenine, El Fjé 4119, Tunisia
Saâd Sekrafi
IRA (Institut des Régions Arides) de Médenine, El Fjé 4119, Tunisia
Anaïs Féron
LISA (Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques), UMR CNRS 7583, Université Paris Est Créteil—Université de Paris, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, F-94010 Créteil, France
Desert dust is now recognized as a major health hazard. However, there still exists a lack of measurements of desert dust atmospheric loads in regions located in the vicinity of the major desert areas, where a growing part of the world population is living. Dust emission is a sporadic and intense phenomenon so that the classical air quality standards should not be appropriate to reflect the real population exposure to desert dust. In order to give some insight to answer this question, PM10 concentrations were continuously measured at a five-minute time step in southern Tunisia from February 2014 to February 2019. The daily and annual PM10 concentrations were first discussed according to the Tunisian air quality standards: In this relatively remote area, close to dust source, these standards were respected at the annual, but no longer at the daily scale. Measurements performed at a high temporal resolution (five minutes) allowed to discriminate the different situations that led to exceed Tunisian daily standards in southern Tunisia. In particular, intense (five-minute PM10 concentrations up to more than 1500 µg m−3) and short-lived (a few hours) dust outbreaks were regularly observed. This result raises the question of the necessity of defining specific air quality standards at the sub-daily scale in countries affected by intense desert dust outbreaks.
