Metal fabrication operations, such as welding, brazing, cutting, painting, and paint removing which are commonly performed at a shipyard, release air pollutants harmful to the health of workers. To protect the health of workers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has established permissible exposure levels (PELs) for various air pollutants released in the workplace. OSHA c...

The major aspects that must be considered in studies of the health effects of environmental pollutants are: the direct damage due to the exposure, the role of pre-existing disease, and effects of the exposure on the response to secondary stresses. In experimental studies at concentrations of air pollutants found in urban environments frank toxicological responses are rarely observed. However, e...

Strictly speaking, all toxins entering the environment can be regarded as environmental poisons. Certain pollutants can, acting over long periods, harm living organisms even in low concentrations. This means that pollutants that are stable and thus persistent have a great ability to act as environmental poisons. Their stability means not only that their effects are long-lasting, but also that t...

We consider as a pollutant any chemical of natural or anthropogenic origin which accumulates in the soil medium and changes the natural soil equilibrium, as a result of human activity. A modern society, however, cannot be developed without the use of natural and synthetic compounds which may be added to the various ecosystems. The art of safeguarding the environment consists of minimizing the a...

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are manmade organic chemicals that remain in the environment for years or decades. POPs are of special concern because they often remain toxic for decades or longer after release to the environment. The more persistent a toxic chemical is, the greater the probability for human exposure over time. Because they circulate globally long after being released into...

Health impact assessment has become important in the development of air quality policies and in finding the relationships between pollutants concentration and health effects. In our work we presented a novel index able to evaluate the effects on the human exposure caused by ambient air pollution in urban areas. The index is able to link both health risk factors and pollutants levels. The indexe...

Monitoring air pollutants via plants is an economic, convenient and credible method compared with the traditional ways. Plants show different damage symptoms to different air pollutants, which can be used to determine the species of air pollutants. Besides, pollutants mass concentration scope can be estimated by the damage extent of plants and the span of polluted time. Based on the domestic an...

Anthropogenic sensory pollution is affecting ecosystems worldwide. Human actions generate acoustic noise, emanate artificial light and emit chemical substances. All of these pollutants are known to affect animals. Most studies on anthropogenic pollution address the impact of pollutants in unimodal sensory domains. High levels of anthropogenic noise, for example, have been shown to interfere wit...

Environmental pollution has become one of the greatest problems in the world, and the concerns about environmental pollutants released by human activities from agriculture and industrial production have been continuously increasing. Although intense efforts have been made to understand the health effects of environmental pollutants, most studies have only focused on direct toxic effects and fai...

Air toxics emission inventories play an important role in air quality regulatory activities. Recently, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) staff compiled a comprehensive air toxics emission inventory for 1996. While acquiring data on the mass of emissions is a necessary first step, equally important is developing information on the potential toxicity of the emitted pollutants. To account ...