Abstract for presentation at 14th IUAPPA World Congress

There are about 2300 gasoline service stations (GSS) in Taiwan, which indicates the establishing density of GSS is about 0.27~3.23 stations/km2 in urbane area of Kaohsiung City. Due to many GSS may be just located nest to the buildings of residence, the emission of fugitive oil vapor to the atmosphere has become an air pollution problem of concern about odor and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs). But less investigation has been reported about the air quality around GSS in southern Taiwan. Accordingly, the main objective of the study is to measure concentration distribution of typical HAPs in the ambient air around six monitored GSS which are located at different types of area of Kaohsiung City which is the largest city of southern Taiwan and. There is about 745000000 m³/yr gasoline sold per year and is estimated about 89.4 tones/yr of vapors released from storage and operation of GSS in Kaohsiung City. The exposure risks of HAPs including benzene (B), toluene (T), ethylbenzene (E), xylene (X) and MtBE were estimated in the study based upon the measured concentrations of HAPs and proposed scenario cases. The investigation results showed the concentrations of B, T, E, X and MtBE possibly as high as 29.7, 49.5, 15.9, 19.7 and 313 ppbv, respectively. The experimental results also indicated the ambient air quality can be affected by the operation of gas stations in the region as far as 150~200 m before HAPs concentrations returning to ambient concentrations.