A review of aromatic hydrocarbon in ambient air in urban cities

Abstract

The objectives of this study is to identify the concentration of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene in the atmospheric environment of several urban cities using published literature data and to identify the potential health effect to human associated with the exposure level using published literature data. The data was collected from journal in order to identify/evaluate the trend and distribution based on the concentration of this compound. Identify the BTEX concentration is important because they can cause significant risk to human health. Benzene is a known carcinogen to human health. Meanwhile, toluene may affect the reproductive and central nervous systems while ethylbenzene and xylenes may have respiratory and neurological effects. Based on the study, benzene has higher concentration the value is 13,417 μg m-3 meanwhile the lowest concentration is o-xylene the value is 0.21 μg m-3. The major sources of aromatic hydrocarbon exposure are tobacco smoke, automobile service stations, exhaust from motor vehicles, and industrial emissions. Overall result shows that, BTEX have very high concentration in urban environment and can lead to the adverse health effect when expose in a long time of exposure. The evaluation of risk health assessment is very important as it is the indicator to the risk associated to the exposure and the monitoring of these hydrocarbons and its potential human adverse effect in urban regions has become a priority.