Assessing the role of area sources in air quality: A comprehensive review

Air pollution poses significant challenges to environmental quality and public health. The array of factors contributing to air pollution necessitates a focus on three primary source categories namely point sources, mobile sources, and area sources. Point sources, typified by industrial facilities and power plants, emit pollutants from stationary positions, facilitating monitoring and regulatory interventions. Conversely, mobile sources including vehicles and aircraft, which emit pollutants while in motion, present a level of logistical challenges for control measures. Area sources, encompassing diffuse emissions from various activities such as agriculture, residential heating, and small-scale industry, present distinctive challenges in quantification and regulation due to their dispersed nature. Despite their substantial contribution to overall pollution levels, area sources have historically received less attention from researchers and regulators. The way to understand area sources is to use models for the other two, therefore, emphasizing the significance of studying area sources more comprehensively, this summary underscores the necessity of developing improved methodologies for assessing and mitigating their emissions.