Study Of Snow Accumulation In The Roadside Space Of Preferential Pollutants From Vehicle Exhaust Emissions

Abstract Emissions of exhaust gases from automobiles have a long-term negative impact on the environment, forming a number of environmental hazards: toxicity, carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, causing the greenhouse effect and acid rain. The paper investigates the flow of the main priority pollutants of these emissions into the snow cover of the roadside space - surface runoff in the winter season: namely hydrocarbons, particles, hardness salts, nitrogen oxides, and ammonia, (which is currently becoming the dominant active nitrogen compound in vehicle emissions due to the widespread use of catalytic systems in vehicles). It was found that during the exposure of the snow cover, the concentration of all studied pollutants in it increased steadily compared to atmospheric snow. With increasing distance from the road, snow contamination with suspended solids, petroleum products, and hardness salts was negatively correlated. This reflects the level of anthropogenic load created in the studied areas by traffic and road maintenance. The concentration of nitrogen-containing compounds – ammonium nitrogen and nitrates – had a positive correlation, i.e., an increase in concentration with increasing distance from the road, which is probably due to the longer distance of light gases NH3 and NOx from the road due to dispersion.