This study proposes an approach to selecting efficient heat sources in the context of long-term expansion planning for urban district heating systems. The includes two stages: synthesis and optimization. During stage, potential source structures are generated using graph grammars. In optimization most effective combination equipment is selected based on minimum construction costs, network pollu...

BACKGROUND Hazardous air pollutant exposures are common in urban areas contributing to increased risk of cancer and other adverse health outcomes. While recent analyses indicate that New York City residents experience significantly higher cancer risks attributable to hazardous air pollutant exposures than the United States as a whole, limited data exist to assess intra-urban variability in air ...

Both canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and principal component analysis (PCA) were applied to atmospheric aerosol and trace gas concentrations and meteorological data collected in Chicago during the summer months of 2002, 2003, and 2004. Concentrations of ammonium, calcium, nitrate, sulfate, and oxalate particulate matter, as well as, meteorological parameters temperature, wind speed, wind d...

Although acute adverse effects on asthma have been frequently found for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's principal criteria air pollutants, there is little epidemiologic information on specific hydrocarbons from toxic emission sources. We conducted a panel study of 22 Hispanic children with asthma who were 10-16 years old and living in a Los Angeles community with high traffic density...

[1] Trends and sources of lead (Pb) aerosol pollution in the North Pacific rim of North America from 1850 to 2001 are investigated using a high-resolution (subannual to annual) ice core record recovered from Eclipse Icefield (3017 masl; St. Elias Mountains, Canada). Beginning in the early 1940s, increasing Pb concentration at Eclipse Icefield occurs coevally with anthropogenic Pb deposition in ...

Assessing the impact of opencast coal mining on water quality Executive Summary The European Directive on Groundwater (80/68/EEC) was fully transposed into Scottish law by the introduction of the Groundwater Regulations 1998. These regulations forbid the introduction of certain substances (denoted as "List I substances") into groundwater, and also place limitations on the extent to which other ...

Accurate pollutant mass budgets are needed for identifying contaminant sources and establishing cleanup goals. We monitored mercury discharges from an abandoned mine site in northern California with the objectives of: (1) estimating the mass loading of mercury from the site; (2) evaluating the factors that control the mercury discharges; (3) assessing the significance of peak flows in transport...

BACKGROUND There has been growing interest among exposure assessors, epidemiologists, and policymakers in the concept of "hot spots", or more broadly, the "spatial extent" of impacts from traffic-related air pollutants. This review attempts to quantitatively synthesize findings about the spatial extent under various circumstances. METHODS We include both the peer-reviewed literature and gover...