Secondary Aerosol Pollution: Formation Mechanisms, Environmental Processes, and Climate-Health Impacts

This themed collection will provide a focused forum for studies that connect formation mechanisms with environmental processes and impacts. It is designed to fit Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts’s emphasis on chemical processes in the environment and their resulting impacts, and Environmental Science: Atmospheres focus on fundamental and applied atmospheric science, especially atmospheric and indoor chemistry, aerosol chemistry, human exposure, health risks, climate interactions, and policy-relevant environmental decision making. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Molecular mechanisms of SOA and SIA formation from anthropogenic, biogenic, biomass-burning, marine, and mixed precursors
• Aqueous-phase, multiphase, nighttime, halogen-initiated, metal-catalyzed, and heterogeneous pathways in polluted and background atmospheres
• Secondary aerosol source apportionment, precursor attribution, isotope and tracer methods, and model-observation integration
• High-resolution molecular measurements, including AMS/ACSM, FIGAERO, EESI, CIMS, offline mass spectrometry, chamber experiments, and field campaigns
• Secondary aerosol effects on optical properties, hygroscopicity, CCN activity, cloud interactions, radiative forcing, and climate feedbacks
• Exposure, oxidative potential, toxicological and epidemiological effects, and health-relevant chemical metrics of secondary aerosol components
• Implications for PM2.5-ozone coordinated control, clean-air policy, emission mitigation, and climate-adaptive

Secondary aerosols are formed through oxidation, gas-to-particle conversion, aqueous and multiphase chemistry, heterogeneous uptake, and atmospheric aging of anthropogenic, biogenic, biomass-burning, marine, and mineral sources. Secondary organic aerosols (SOA) and secondary inorganic aerosols (SIA) constitute a major fraction of fine particulate matter in many environments and influence air quality, visibility, atmospheric oxidation capacity, cloud condensation nuclei activity, radiative forcing, ecosystem deposition, and human exposure. 

Despite decades of progress, key uncertainties remain in how precursor mixtures, oxidants, aerosol acidity, liquid water, temperature, relative humidity, NOx, SO2, NH3, halogens, transition metals, and co-emitted primary particles jointly regulate secondary aerosol formation. These uncertainties limit the predictive skill of air-quality and climate models and complicate the design of coordinated controls for PM2.5, ozone, ammonia, sulfur, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds. 

Authors are welcome to submit original research as a Communication article or Full Paper or contribute a review article. Please contact the editorial office to register your interest or for more information. Alternatively, you can submit a manuscript below.  

Manuscripts should be submitted via the Royal Society of Chemistry’s online submission service and the Editorial Office informed by email. Please state the code “XXIAC26” in the “Comments to the Editor” submission question when you submit your manuscript, to indicate that this is a submission for the themed collection. The Editorial Office reserves the right to check suitability of submissions in relation to the scope of the collection and inclusion of accepted articles in the collection is not guaranteed. All manuscripts will be subject to the journal's usual peer review process. Accepted manuscripts will be added to the online collection as soon as they are online and will be published in a regular issue of Environmental Science: Atmospheres or Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts.