A BETR way to track toxic pollutants.

A BETR way to track toxic pollutants.

Why are chemicals that have been banned for over a decade still being detected in the environment? How is it that chemicals and other pollutants such as particulate matter turn up hundreds or even thousands of miles from their sources? These are just two of the questions that a team of American and Canadian scientists hope will be answered using a model they have developed to track pollutants a...

Everyday exposure to toxic pollutants.

RELATED LINKS Imagine that a killer is on the loose, one who shoots his victims and flees. Police investigators would undoubtedly respond by visiting each crime scene and meticulously searching for clues. They would photograph the body, take fingerprints and question witnesses. An autopsy would recover the bullet for tests. The authorities could then use this information to establish exactly wh...

Criteria air pollutants and toxic air pollutants.

This review presents a brief overview of the health effects and exposures of two criteria pollutants--ozone and particulate matter--and two toxic air pollutants--benzene and formaldehyde. These pollutants were selected from the six criteria pollutants and from the 189 toxic air pollutants on the basis of their prevalence in the United States, their physicochemical behavior, and the magnitude of...

Control Strategy For Toxic Pollutants

Environmental impact of toxic pollutants.

A pollutant is any natural or unnatural material that is present in the environment at unnaturally high levels. Concern about pollution is meaningful only in the context of a pollutant’s impact on the biosphere. How a pollutant affects the biosphere has been conventionally characterized in terms of easily quantifiable measures such as the chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand ...