Organohalogens, especially organochlorinated compounds (OCs) such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), have long been recognized as a potential threat to human health and, therefore, these compounds have been widely investigated in foods [3, 27], vegetation [9, 14], and the atmosphere [1, 11]. Recently, interest in using extractable organohalogens (EOX) as parameters for the quantification of t...

Although official efforts to control air pollution have traditionally focused on outdoor air, it is now apparent that elevated contaminant concentrations are common inside some private and public buildings. Concerns about potential public health problems due to indoor air pollution are based on evidence that urban residents typically spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors, concentrati...

Forced-air warming devices are effective for the prevention of surgical hypothermia. However, these devices intake nonsterile floor-level air, and it is unknown whether they have adequate filtration measures to prevent the internal buildup or emission of microbial contaminants. We rated the intake filtration efficiency of a popular current-generation forced-air warming device (Bair Hugger model...

OBJECTIVES Personal air measurements of aerosols and gases among tunnel construction workers were performed as part of a 11-day follow-up study on the relationship between exposure to aerosols and gases and cardiovascular and respiratory effects. METHODS Ninety tunnel construction workers employed at 11 available construction sites participated in the exposure study. The workers were divided ...

Softcomputing techniques are fast becoming reliable and efficient means of prediction and estimation. This has made their application more wide spread in recent years. With the growing need for intelligent devices and systems comes the need to explore these techniques even further. This paper applies neural networks and differential evolution (two of the most effective softcomputing algorithms)...

Atmospheric air contains many trace components which are process contaminants or equipment fouling agents in a cryogenic air separation process unit (ASU). Based on the potential problems that they may cause, the trace contaminants are categorized as corrosive, plugging or reactive species. This paper discusses a three step process to manage the trace contaminants as they move through the ASU: ...

This study concerns the effects of urban air pollution on the nasopharyngeal epithelium, with the aim of evaluating the possible harmful activity of levels of atmospheric pollution which are not currently considered to be dangerous. Over a 3 month period, 10 lambs kept in a zone characterized by numerous vehicles were sacrificed at regular intervals, and their nasopharyngeal mucosa was examined...

Proposed emission control strategies for reducing ozone and particulate matter are evaluated better when air quality and health effects models are used together. The Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model is the US Environmental Protection Agency's model for determining public policy and forecasting air quality. CMAQ was used to forecast air quality changes due to several emission contro...

To ensure that indoor air quality mitigation approaches, such as ventilation, are providing the desired indoor air quality, it is necessary to better understand the varied sources of indoor air contaminants and how different mitigation approaches will affect those sources. This article describes a generalized model that describes the efficacy of different indoor air quality improvement strategi...