Multicriteria analysis of environmental quality in Taipei: public preferences and improvement strategies

The public preferences for environmental quality should be a primary consideration of planners and decision-makers in environmental systems planning. In the first stage of multicriteria analysis, a multi-attribute evaluation model for determining public preferences is formulated. The environmental indices are defined for a comparison of environmental quality in different metropolitan districts. The public preferences of the environmental quality in Taipei are obtained using the weighted average rating method. The results indicate air quality and noise pollution as main public concern. In the second stage of multicriteria analysis, strategies are proposed to improve the air quality, and criteria are established. The experts evaluated all alternative strategies according to the criteria. The alternatives are ranked applying the compromise ranking method.     

Polychlorinated biphenyls and polybrominated diphenyl ethers in the North American atmosphere

To assess the spatial concentration variability of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in the atmosphere on a large continental scale, their annually integrated air concentrations were determined in 2000/2001 using XAD-based passive air samplers (PAS). The network included 40 stations in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Belize and Costa Rica, and covered 72 degrees of latitude and longitude. Total concentrations of PCB and PBDE congeners ranged from below the detection limit to 130 ng PAS-1 and 24 ng PAS-1, respectively. PCBs displayed a large variation between urban, rural and remote sites, whereas PBDEs did not follow such a pattern. Open burning of "Penta"-containing waste may have contributed to the PBDEs detected in the air samples from rural and remote areas. Air from the Canadian Arctic had a relatively higher percentage of lighter PCB congeners than air sampled in the tropical region, which is interpreted as evidence for global fractionation.