As part of an epidemiological study among workers exposed to flour total dust and flour aeroallergen concentrations were measured with personal samplers over a workshift in three large bakeries and four flour mills and packing stations. In the bakeries geometric means for total dust concentrations ranged from 0.4 mg/m3 in the bread wrapping area up to 6.4 mg/m3 at the dough brake. The flour aer...

Atmospheric deposition is an important but still poorly constrained source of trace micronutrients to the open ocean because of the dearth of in situ measurements of total deposition (i.e., wet +dry deposition) in remote regions. In this work, we discuss the upper ocean distribution of dissolved Fe and Al in the eastern Indian Ocean along a 95°E meridional transect spanning the Antarctic margin...

Compared with common dust storms, saline dust storms transport high concentrations of fine-grain saline and alkaline material. The saline dust storm differs from common dust storm, especially considering the sources of the suspended particulate matter (PM), chemical composition, grain size, and circulation processes. Atmospheric particulate matters (TSP, PM10, PM2.5, and PM1) and their water-so...

Some hot, massive, population-I Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars of the carbon subclass are known to be prolific dust-producers. How dust can form in such a hostile environment remains a mystery. Here we report the discovery of a relatively cool, extended, multi-arc dust envelope around the star WR112, most likely formed by wind-wind collision in a long-period binary system. We derive the binary orbital p...

The aim of this preliminary study was to assess exposure to various constituents of the organic dust generated during the processing of hemp in a small group of exposed workers. Airborne levels of inhalable dust, endotoxin and soluble protein, and the respirable, thoracic and inhalable fractions of fungal, bacterial and actinomycete contamination were measured in the personal breathing zone of ...

In this paper, we present an integrated wind-erosion modelling system which couples a physically based wind-erosion scheme, a high-resolution atmospheric model and a dust-transport model with a geographic information database. This system can be used to determine the pattern and intensity of wind erosion, in particular, dust emission from the surface and dust concentration in the atmosphere. Th...

[1] An empirical relation is developed to express the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) aerosol index (AI) for the case of dust plumes, as an explicit function of four physical quantities: the single scattering albedo, optical thickness, altitude of the plume and surface pressure. This relation allows sensitivity analysis of the TOMS AI with physical properties, quantitative comparison wi...

BACKGROUND Children with asthma have a high prevalence of environmental allergies, especially to indoor allergens. The relationships of exposure to indoor allergens (dust mites, cat, dog, cockroach, and molds) and other host factors to allergy sensitization have not been evaluated simultaneously in a large cohort. OBJECTIVES We studied 1041 children aged 5 to 12 years with mild-to-moderate as...

The amount of water supply in Japan was 16 billion ton as of 1989. Water from rivers and other sources is purified, sterilized and then supplied to the residents through conduits. When conduits are accidentally damaged, they must be repaired by the workers of the Waterworks Bureau of the local government. In this task, the workers are exposed to airborne dust which develops while digging and fi...