The Increasing Importance of Particles, Volatile Organic Compounds and Ammonia in Future Air Quality Policy

Ensuring continuing environmental and health improvements, it is important regularly to reassess what pollutants from vehicles are targeted. Are the right compounds being regulated? The Emissions Analytics’ presentation looks at a range of pollutant sources that may need to be considered to give a holistic view of the environmental impact of vehicles, supported by data from its independent, real-world EQUA test programme.

• Post-Euro-6 emissions regulation in Europe is an opportunity to simplify and refocus on emerging environment threats.
• Certain unregulated tailpipe pollutants, such as ammonia, which contributes to secondary particle formation, are candidates for future regulation.
• Volatile organic compounds are of interest from several angles: vehicle interior air quality and the off-gassing from materials; tailpipe speciation of hydrocarbons including formaldehyde; and off-gassing from tyres.
• Tyre wear emissions are currently unregulated but are believed to be a growing contributor to air and marine pollution.
• Emissions Analytics runs independent test programmes that investigate and quantify real-world exhaust, cabin and tyre pollution. Resulting measurements form the EQUA Index database, which is the source of results presented in this paper.