Air Pollution and Health

The use of multistage, dry, fluidized beds of continuously recycled, coal-based activated carbon appears technically and economically attractive for both adsorption of stack gas So₂ and sequential conversion to elemental sulfur. Conceptual design details and economic factors are discussed for the treatment of power plant or oil refinery SO₂ effluents with by-product sulfur recovery.     

Health Effects and Energy Choices

ABSTRACT

Day- and nighttime total suspended particulate matter was collected inside and outside Emperor Qin's Terra-Cotta Museum in winter and summer 2008. The purpose was to characterize the winter and summer differences of indoor airborne particles in two display halls with different architectural and ventilation conditions, namely the Exhibition Hall and Pit No. 1. The morphology and elemental composition of two season samples were investigated using scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry. It is found that the particle size, particle mass concentration, and particle type were associated with the visitor numbers in the Exhibition Hall and with the natural ventilation in Pit No. 1 in both winter and summer. Evident winter and summer changes in the composition and physicochemical properties of the indoor suspended particulate matters were related to the source emission and the meteorological conditions. Particle mass concentrations in both halls were higher in winter than in summer. In winter, the size of the most abundant particles at the three sites were all between 0.5 and 1.0 μm, whereas in summer the peaks were all located at less than 0.5 μm. The fraction of sulfur-containing particles was 2–7 times higher in winter than in summer. In addition to the potential soiling hazard, the formation and deposition of sulfur-containing particles in winter may lead to the chemical and physical weathering of the surfaces of the terra-cotta statues.

IMPLICATIONS Relatively few microanalyses of indoor airborne particles inside museums in China have been performed. The mass concentrations of winter and summer indoor total suspended particulate (TSP) are presented for the Emperor Qin's Terra-Cotta Museum along with the characterization of individual particles via computerized scanning electron microscopy and an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry. The results indicate that both the high level of particle mass concentrations in winter and the predominant fine particles in summer were responsible for the soiling of the statues over a long period of time. The irreplaceable statues were also facing with weathering hazards posed by abundant sulfur-containing particles, especially in winter. Data provided in this study suggested that mechanical ventilation, air filtration, and air conditioning systems should be installed in Pit No. 1 display hall and proper display strategy should be adopted in Exhibition Hall.     

Technician Training in Environmental Health Science

In colleges and universities across the country, courses in ecology and environmental science are among the newest additions to the catalog. The goal of such courses is to make students aware of the environmental dilemma, a just and necessary goal. However, there is a need to do more than this. Jobs dealing with environmental protection are becoming more and more complex due to the recent passage of State and Federal legislation, which includes the Clean Air Act, the Amendments to the Water Pollution Control Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act, just to name a few. Trained personnel are needed by industry and government. For this reason, in 1971, Middlesex County College initiated an Environmental Health Science Technology Program.     

Public Health Service National Fallout Surveillance Program

A semi-automated method for determination of fluorine in biological materials has been developed incorporating the Technicon AutoAnalyzer. One-half gram of dried, ground plant material is ashed, alkali-fused, diluted with water, and the suspension is pumped, along with H₂SO₄, at controlled rates, into the hot revolving glass helix of a digestor unit. As the acid-digest mixture passes through the heated coil, volatile fluoride and water vapor are evolved. The volatile fluoride and water vapor are pulled from the helix under reduced pressure through a tube which projects into the helix. The tube, in turn, is connected to a water-jacketed condenser and then to an impinger where the sample is continuously mixed. An aliquot of the impinger liquid is being constantly withdrawn. This sample is then air-segmented and mixed with a reagent containing alizarin complexone, pH 4 acetate buffer, lanthanum nitrate, acetone, and water. The sample-reagent combination passes through 4 full-length mixing coils where color development takes place. Upon reacting with fluoride, the wine-red alizarin complexone-La(III) reagent forms a lilac blue fluoride complex. The solution is pumped from the mixing coils through the tubular flow cell of the colorimeter. The absorbence of the solution is measured at 624 mμ, and the signal is transmitted to a recorder where the results are plotted on absorbency paper. The absorbence at the apex of the peak is proportional to the amount of fluoride in the sample between the range of 2.5-80 μg °F. Samples are analyzed at a rate of 12 per hour. Results compare favorably with those obtained by Willard-Winter distillation. Recent studies indicate that the F content of plant tissues can be estimated without prior ashing and fusion     

居室放射性氡对人体健康的影响及防护

阐述了放射性氡的特征、来源及其危害，并针对氡的来源提出相应的防治措施。     

Health risk of combustion products: toxicological considerations

Combustion of organic material produces an almost uncountable number of products among which are many chemicals known to have toxic properties. A pertinent example is the diesel engine emission. There is concern about the possible health effects and we would like to know what risk is associated with the exposure. If risk is defined as the probability that a certain health effect occurs within a defined time span or as a result of a certain strain (Royal Society Study Group)--and it is important to emphasize the quantitative aspect of this definition--we must admit that we do not know a good answer. The example of diesel exhaust is used to demonstrate the toxicological approach to risk characterization in general and the possible improvement of exposure assessment with nitroarenes as indicators for environmental contaminations in particular.     

Health concerns among waste collectors during pandemic crisis

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the economic, social, and psychological aspects globally. COVID-19 can possibly spread through municipal...     

环评中人群健康评价的指标探讨

在环境污染对人群健康的影响评价中，为了选择的指标能够确切地反映污染与效应之间的关系，比较系统地总结和研究了各项指标的适用范围、敏感性、可操作性及应用实例，阐述了环境污染对人体的非特异性危害的原理及其指标应用。提出５方面共１０项指标作为评价的常用指标。     

Health care industries: potential generators of genotoxic waste

Health care waste includes all the waste generated by health care establishments, research facilities, and laboratories. This constitutes a variety of chemical substances, such as pharmaceuticals, radionuclides, solvents, and disinfectants. Recently, scientists and environmentalists have discovered that wastewater produced by hospitals possesses toxic properties due to various toxic chemicals and pharmaceuticals capable of causing environmental impacts and even lethal effects to organisms in aquatic ecosystems. Many of these compounds resist normal wastewater treatment and end up in surface waters. Besides aquatic organisms, humans can be exposed through drinking water produced from contaminated surface water. Indeed, some of the substances found in wastewaters are genotoxic and are suspected to be potential contributors to certain cancers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the genotoxic and cytotoxic potential of wastewaters from two hospitals and three clinical diagnostic centers located in Jaipur (Rajasthan State), India using the prokaryotic Salmonella mutagenicity assay (Ames assay) and the eukaryotic Saccharomyces cerevisiae respiration inhibition assay. In the Ames assay, untreated wastewaters from both of the health care sectors resulted in significantly increased numbers of revertant colonies up to 1,000–4,050 as measured by the Salmonella typhimurium TA98 and TA100 strains (with and without metabolic activation) after exposure to undiluted samples, which indicated the highly genotoxic nature of these wastewaters. Furthermore, both hospital and diagnostic samples were found to be highly cytotoxic. Effective concentrations at which 20 % (EC₂₀) and 50 % (EC₅₀) inhibition of the respiration rate of the cells occurred ranged between ～0.00 and 0.52 % and between 0.005 and 41.30 % (calculated with the help of the MS excel software XLSTAT 2012.1.01; Addinsoft), respectively, as determined by the S. cerevisiae assay. The results indicated that hospital wastewaters contain genotoxic and cytotoxic components. In addition, diagnostic centers also represent small but significant sources of genotoxic and cytotoxic wastes.     

Predicting and Managing the Health Risks of Sour-Gas Wells

The development of sour-gas resources in Canada and the United States has prompted concerns about the public health risks of accidental releases of gas contaminated with hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) from wells. This paper focuses on methods for improving the prediction and management of those risks. Data associated with the health effects of hydrogen sulfide are examined, and it is suggested that sublethal effects should be addressed in risk assessments of sour-gas wells along with the life-threatening effects normally considered. The demarcation of hazard zones around wells can be improved by using a statistical approach for estimating an upper-bound H₂S release rate; this rate can then be used in an atmospheric dispersion model to estimate maximum distances to downwind concentrations for lethal (300 ppmv) and sublethal (50 ppmv) effects resulting from an accidental release. A vertical release is found to have little impact, especially under stable atmospheric conditions; horizontal releases, on the other hand, result in the greatest downwind distances for health impacts. Management of health risks depends on a mix of safety technologies and contingency actions, such as well-ignition options and provision for post-release monitoring and assessment of ambient H₂S concentrations.     

Inhalation Transfer Factors for Air Pollution Health Risk Assessment

ABSTRACT

To facilitate routine health risk assessments, we develop the concept of an inhalation transfer factor (ITF). The ITF is defined as the pollutant mass inhaled by an exposed individual per unit pollutant mass emitted from an air pollution source. A cumulative population inhalation transfer factor (PITF) is also defined to describe the total fraction of an emitted pollutant inhaled by all members of the exposed population. In this paper, ITFs and PITFs are calculated for outdoor releases from area, point, and line sources, indoor releases in single zone and multizone indoor environments, and releases within motor vehicles. Typical PITFs for an urban area from emissions outdoors are ~10^-6–10^-3. PITFs associated with emissions in buildings or in moving vehicles are typically much higher, ~10^-3–10^-1.     

Health Significance of Pulmonary Function Responses to Airborne Irritants

Exposures to airborne irritants such as O₃, NO₂, SO₂ and H₂SO₄ can produce measurable changes in a variety of pulmonary functions such as respiratory mechanics, pulmonary gas exchange, mucociliary particle clearance, and airway permeability. The most commonly measured indices of pulmonary function are those obtained by analyzing flows and volumes during a maximal forced expiratory maneuver, because they can be obtained readily in both laboratory and field studies in humans. Other functional measures are essentially limited to laboratory studies on relatively small populations of humans, or on experimental animals. Interpretation of respiratory function changes in relation to exposures to airborne irritants is complicated by the large interindividual variability in baseline function and responsiveness, the superposition of both the transient effects of recent acute exposure and the cumulative effects of chronic exposure at any given measurement, and the inherent day-to-day variability of effort dependent indices. Furthermore, community exposures occur as mixtures. Each of several components may affect the same functions, but with different time scales, and may affect different segments of the population to different degrees. The greatest uncertainties lie in the significance of transient and apparently reversible effects, and their contribution, if any, to permanent functional changes. Use of animal models to study the role of transient changes in function on the development of permanent changes is illustrated in terms of the effects of H₂SO₄ on particle clearance function.     

An Environmental Decision-Making Tool for Evaluating Ground-Level Ozone-Related Health Effects

Abstract

A computer model called the Ozone Risk Assessment Model (ORAM) was developed to evaluate the health effects caused by ground-level ozone (O₃) exposure. ORAM was coupled with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Third-Generation Community Multiscale Air Quality model (Models-3/CMAQ), the state-of-the-art air quality model that predicts O₃ concentration and allows the examination of various scenarios in which emission rates of O₃ precursors (basically, oxides of nitrogen [NO_x] and volatile organic compounds) are varied. The principal analyses in ORAM are exposure model performance evaluation, health-effects calculations (expected number of respiratory hospital admissions), economic valuation, and sensitivity and uncertainty analysis through a Monte Carlo simulation. As a demonstration of the system, ORAM was applied to the eastern Tennessee region, and the entire O₃ season was simulated for a base case (typical emissions) and three different emission scenarios. The results indicated that a synergism occurs when reductions in NO_x emissions from mobile and point sources were applied simultaneously. A 12.9% reduction in asthma hospital admissions is expected when both mobile and point source NO_x emissions are reduced (50 and 70%, respectively) versus a 5.8% reduction caused by mobile source and a 3.5% reduction caused by point sources when these emission sources are reduced individually.