Major conclusions and recommendations of the National Commission on Air Quality on issues of health in the Clean Air Act are presented. The issues revolve mainly about the standard setting processes for ubiquitous pollutants, controlled through ambient air quality standards (Section 109), and for hazardous pollutants controlled through emission standards (Section 112). The conceptual difficulti...

In controlled clinical studies, volunteers are deliberately exposed to specific air pollutants under conditions simulating ambient exposures, and health-related responses are documented. Studies of the health risks of air pollution need to be scientifically rigorous and clearly relevant to "real-world" pollution exposures. Their results should be confirmed by independent replication if they are...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Ireland is required under section 75 of the Environmental Protection Agency Act, 1992 to specify and publish quality objectives in relation to any environmental medium which the Agency considers reasonable and desirable, for the purposes of environmental protection. Soil, air and water are generally seen as the three main environmental compartments t...

Indoor air pollution is an increasing health concern, especially in enclosed environments such as underground subway stations because of increased global usage by urban populations. This study measured the indoor air quality of underground platforms at 10 metro stations of the Taipei Rapid Transit system (TRTS) in Taiwan, including humidity, temperature, carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO...

Air Pollution monitoring and measurement are generally done using sampling techniques and analysis equipment often heavy, complex and expensive. Although these methods offer a high measurement precision which is essential to answer standards requirements, they are not adapted for quality oriented applications where simple information with low precision can be sufficient. The use of semiconducto...

Environmental policymaking typically takes place in the context of a system with several levelsof government. And this raises the important issue of the appropriate role of the various governments in the setting of environmental standards, the design of regulatory measures to attain the standards, and the monitoring and enforcement of these measures. Actualpractice reveals a rather strange and ...

This study, to our knowledge, presents the first indoor data for a range of major air pollutants in school buildings in various locations in the State of Kuwait. Indoor air testing was performed within secondary schools over a 7-month period and sampling was conducted on a spot basis during normal school hours. As part of this program, samplers were deployed in student occupied classrooms at 46...

The filamentational instability of spatially broadband femtosecond optical pulses in air is investigated by means of a kinetic wave equation for spatially incoherent photons. An explicit expression for the spatial amplification rate is derived and analyzed. It is found that the spatial spectral broadening of the pulse can lead to stabilization of the filamentation instability. Thus optical smoo...