INTRODUCTION We investigated whether markers of airway and systemic inflammation, as well as heart rate variability (HRV) in asthmatics, change in response to fluctuations in ambient particulate matter (PM) in the coarse [PM with aerodynamic diameter 2.5-10 microm (PM(2.5-10))] and fine (PM(2.5)) size range. METHODS Twelve adult asthmatics, living within a 30-mile radius of an atmospheric mon...

BACKGROUND Current air quality standards for particulate matter (PM) use the PM mass concentration [PM with aerodynamic diameters ≤ 10 μm (PM(10)) or ≤ 2.5 μm (PM(2.5))] as a metric. It has been suggested that particles from combustion sources are more relevant to human health than are particles from other sources, but the impact of policies directed at reducing PM from combustion processes is ...

Exposure to ambient air pollution particles with a diameter of < 10 microm (PM(10)) has been associated with increased cardiopulmonary morbidity and mortality. We postulate that these adverse health effects are related to proinflammatory mediators produced in the lung and released into the circulation where they initiate a systemic inflammatory response. The present study was designed to determ...

Air samples were collected by personal sampling with five stage Sioutas cascade impactors and respirable cyclones in parallel among tappers and crane operators in two manganese (Mn) alloy smelters in Norway to investigate PM fractions. The mass concentrations of PM collected by using the impactors and the respirable cyclones were critically evaluated by comparing the results of the parallel mea...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently revised the national ambient air quality standards to include a new PM-2.5 particulate standard. We examine the contributions of fine (PM-2.5) and coarse (PM-2.5 to -10) fraction of typical urban aerosols to particle doses in different lung airways resulting from 24-h exposure to the standard concentration of 150 microg m-3. The aerosol is...

A trial was conducted in a 7-year old citrus orchard of the National Horticultural Research Institute, Nigeria, to investigate the effect of different levels of organo-mineral fertilizers as it affect the economic returns of sweet orange (Citrus sinensis L. Osbeck var. Agege 1). The treatments consisted of: (1). 10 tha Poultry 1 manure (PM), (2). 15 t ha PM, (3) 20 t ha-1 PM, (4). 0.45 t ha NPK...

Mass size distributions of ambient aerosol were measured in Zabrze, a heavily industrialized city of Poland, during a summer and a winter season. The chemical analyses of the surface layer of PM(10), PM(2.5) and PM(1) in this area were also performed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Results suggested that the influence of an atmospheric aerosol on the health condition of Zabrze reside...

An extensive sand flux monitoring network was installed on the dry lake bed at Owens Lake, California to determine hourly PM-10 emissions. The network consisted of 135 co-located electronic and passive sand flux samplers covering 135 square kilometers of the lake bed. The network measured the hourly sand flux at each site for 30 months. Previous researchers found that PM-10 emissions due to win...

BACKGROUND Emerging evidence, mainly from Europe and Asia, indicates that venous thromboembolism (VTE) occurs most often in winter. Factors implicated in such seasonality are low temperature-mediated exacerbation of coagulation and high levels of particulate matter (PM) air pollution. However, in contrast to most European and Asian cities, particulate matter pollution peaks in the summer in man...

In recent years, several hypotheses have emerged to explain the toxicologic activity of particulate matter. Organic compounds, ultrafine particles, biologic components, and transition metals are some of the constituents that reportedly exert some type of adverse effect on human health. A considerable fraction of the urban particulate matter consists of carbon compounds, which originate mostly f...