Report | 11 February 2019 | VTI-code: 1000
The City of Stockholm has been working since 2011 on reducing, through improved and specific street operations, the suspension of road dust to the air. Since the start, the effects on both dust storage and air quality have been followed up by VTI and SLB-analys. Specific measures have included mainly dust binding with calcium magnesium acetate (CMA) and vacuum cleaning (Disa-Clean). However, the vacuum sweeper has not been used this season. The air quality measurements show that the environmental quality standard for PM10 is met for the fifth year in Stockholm, but the levels are higher than the previous year. Road dust loads measured as DL180 (road dust less than 180 μm) have generally increased, which has been the development since the 2014–2015 season. The Folkungagatan, which had a new pavement in 2016, still has high road dust volumes, but also lower PM10 levels than before the pavement change. The evaluation of the possibilities of optimizing the dust binding shows that CMA is often used even though the PM10 levels were not at risk to be exceeded. May was particularly dry and several PM10 exceedances could then have been prevented with CMA, but the measure ends in April due to risk of low friction. Higher precision with, for example, forecast-based measures would probably be beneficial for optimizing the efforts.