Exploratory assessment of outdoor and indoor airborne black carbon in different locations of Hanoi, Vietnam

Black carbon (BC) is a significant component of atmospheric particulate matter, especially in areas affected by combustion emissions. Despite the fact that air pollution is a great concern in Vietnam, there are no studies on the level of BC in the outdoor and indoor environment. In this exploratory study, an assessment of urban BC concentrations was conducted through monitoring of both outdoor and indoor BC concentrations in three households and one working office at different locations across Hanoi. PM and meteorology data were also obtained for this monitoring period to evaluate the association between them and the outdoor BC concentration. Overall, the mean indoor and mean outdoor BC concentrations by 30 second-logs for the monitoring period were 4.42 μg/m and 4.89 μg/m, respectively. Time-series analysis of paired indoor and outdoor BC concentrations suggested that indoor BC level was usually influenced by outdoor BC level (r = 0.78, p < 0.001). In this study, we observed a significant positive association between outdoor BC and PM (r = 0.39, p < 0.001) while outdoor BC negatively correlated with wind speed (r = −0.34, p < 0.001). The level of outdoor BC in Hanoi measured in this study is relatively high and should be confirmed by further studies.