Urban areas are important regional sources of airborne polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and population-scale airborne exposure, yet a comprehensive bottom-up source inventory of PCB emissions has never been quantified at urban scales in the United States. Here we report a comprehensive parcel level inventory of PCB stocks and emissions for Chicago, Illinois, developed with a transferable method from publicly available data. Chicago's legacy stocks hold 276 ±147 tonnes ∑PCBs, with 0.2 tonnes added annually. Transformers and building sealants represent the largest legacy categories at 250 and 20 tonnes, respectively. From these stocks, annual emissions rates of 203 kg for ∑PCBs and 3 kg for PCB 11 explain observed concentrations in Chicago air. Sewage sludge drying contributes 25% to emissions, soils 30%, and transformers 22%. Known contaminated sites account for <1% of stocks and 17% of emissions to air. Paint is responsible for 0.00001% of stocks but up to 7% of ΣPCBs emissions. Stocks and emissions are highly concentrated and not correlated with population density or demographics at the neighborhood scale. Results suggest that strategies to further reduce exposure and ecosystem deposition must focus on the largest emissions sources rather than the most contaminated sites or the largest closed source legacy stocks.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 12. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 January 2017.
All research outputs
#3,870,133
of 33,028,947 outputs
Outputs from Environmental Science & Technology
#4,661
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Outputs of similar age
#41,268
of 314,561 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Environmental Science & Technology
#57
of 245 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,028,947 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 88th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 25,162 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 18.2. This one has done well, scoring higher than 81% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 314,561 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 245 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 76% of its contemporaries.
