Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Health Damaging Pollutants »

Pollution of air is among the serious issue that the world is confronting today in developed and developing countries. An escalating numberof automobiles and industries incessantly add toxic gases like SO2, NOx, and particulate matter into the atmosphere. Simultaneously,secondary pollutant tropospheric O3 formed by the reactions of primary pollutant is equally hazardous. Suspension of these contaminantsin air leads to damaging effects on human health and plant productivity and results in the degradation of ecosystems and biodiversity.Human health issues associated with pollutants in air include cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, nervous and reproductive systemdisorders, lowered life expectancy, and mutations. Moreover, air pollutants negatively affect different morphological and physiologicalcharacteristics of the plants. Air pollutants generate reactive oxygen species that negatively affect various physiological pathways inthe plants inducing their anti-oxidative defense system to counteract oxidative stress. Air pollutants are also accountable for injury tovegetation and losses in crop productivity which is an increased cause of concern. Hence considering the air pollution menace, effectiveregulations, policies, and strategies should be developed for good human health, agricultural production, and food security.

Air pollution increases the likelihood of developing a variety of health issues, particularly in the field of respiration. Involuntary exposure to traffic-related air pollution affects humans from fetal development to death. Nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, benzene, ozone, particulate matter 10 (PM10), lead, arsenic, cadmium, nickel, benzopyrene, and particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) are among the lung-damaging substances found in air pollutants. Determining the causal relationship between various major road pollutants and the human respiratory system is a difficult task. In general, it can be concluded that traffic-related pollutants will induce an inflammatory response that will progress based on the variation of humans exposed. The concept of oxidative stress resulting from traffic-related pollutants has also begun to receive extensive research. This gives hope for assisting the human anti-oxidant system in combating the increasingly difficult-to-avoid threat of air pollution.

Within solar ultraviolet (UV) light, the longest UVA1 wavelengths, with significant and relatively constant levels all year round and large penetration properties, produce effects in all cutaneous layers. Their effects, mediated by numerous endogenous chromophores, primarily involve the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The resulting oxidative stress is the major mode of action of UVA1, responsible for lipid peroxidation, protein carbonylation, DNA lesions and subsequent intracellular signaling cascades. These molecular changes lead to mutations, apoptosis, dermis remodeling, inflammatory reactions and abnormal immune responses. The altered biological functions contribute to clinical consequences such as hyperpigmentation, inflammation, photoimmunosuppression, sun allergies, photoaging and photocancers. Such harmful impacts have also been reported after the use of UVA1 phototherapy or tanning beds. Furthermore, other external aggressors, such as pollutants and visible light (Vis), were shown to induce independent, cumulative and synergistic effects with UVA1 rays. In this review, we synthetize the biological and clinical effects of UVA1 and the complementary effects of UVA1 with pollutants or Vis. The identified deleterious biological impact of UVA1 contributing to clinical consequences, combined with the predominance of UVA1 rays in solar UV radiation, constitute a solid rational for the need for a broad photoprotection, including UVA1 up to 400 nm.

The damage of air pollution to cultural heritage is widely known. However, the quantitative effects still need to be explored at a holistic level. Different from existing research which focuses on the “model calculation” methods, this paper uses an econometric approach to assess the overall impact of air pollution on the sustainable protection of world cultural heritage in China. Based on the data of the annual monitoring report from 2014 to 2020 released by the China World Cultural Heritage Monitoring Platform, this paper uses the thermal inversion as an instrument variable of air pollution to estimate the overall effects of air pollution on all world cultural heritage sites in China. The results indicate that almost all the air pollutants (except for CO) have significantly negative effects on heritage. The damaging effects of gaseous pollutants including SO2, NO2 and O3 is greater than that of particulate pollutants such as PM2.5 and PM10. Rainfall can exacerbate the worsening effects of gaseous pollutants, but will mitigate the negative effects of particulate pollutants; the windy weather may weaken the negative impact. In addition, environmental regulations from the local government can also alleviate the negative influence of air pollution on heritage protection. This research can provide a more comprehensive environmental prevention policy reference for the protection of world cultural heritage.

Every coin has two sides. Likewise, as we are progressing towards the era of technology and industrialization; a lot of worst effects are arising as well. Along with the ecosystem, human health is suffering from some adverse issues because of pollution. We have heard about outdoor air pollution but indoor air pollution is even more harmful to human health. It is being observed that Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is getting worse day by day leading to many lung diseases, breathing issues, low birth rate, eye-related diseases, perinatal conditions, etc. Hence these issues have to be considered before getting too late. Indoor air quality varies from regions i.e. in the case of developed countries; cooling-heating appliances, electric devices, petroleum products, etc. are the major contributors to deplete IAQ. While in case of developing countries which have a huge number of rural areas; biomass open fires, traditional cooking systems with direct fire expose or indoor stove, etc. are the major factors behind damaged indoor air quality. Generally, children and aged persons spend most of their time inside the house. These people have low immunity hence they get easily affected by depleted IAQ and face many health-related issues. There is a long list of harmful pollutants like NOX, COX, SOX, organic matter, etc. that play a significant role in damaging air quality. A ventilation system is essential in offices, theatres, malls, homes, etc. but the occupant devices lower the air quality index. Likewise, green-house effects increase the percentage of COX which damages nature and human health as well. All these factors, parameters, adverse effects and solutions are studied in this paper.

Worldwide statistics show that 2.4 billion people depend on biomass fuel for cooking and heating. Biomass are plant materials and animal waste used especially as source of fuel. Typically, burned in open fire or inefficient stoves without appropriate ventilation, biomass fuels emit substantial amounts of health damaging pollutants leading to high level of exposure. In developing countries the level is at least 10-20 times higher than World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines. Women and young children who spend many hours daily near the fire are the most exposed. A growing body of literature implicates in-door air pollution from biomass fuel as a risk factor for the development of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Lung cancer in women and Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI) in young children.4-8 About two billion people have no access to modern energy and a billion have it only sporadically. Household members especially women and children in rural settlements collect all kinds of materials that are hazardous for their source of household energy. This is peculiar to the rural populations and more so the poor communities. Biomass fuels are at the low end of the energy ladder in terms of combustion efficiency and cleanliness. Smoke from biomass combustion produces a large number of health damaging air pollutants including inhalable particulate matter, Carbon Monoxide (CO), Nitrogen oxides, Formaldehyde, Benzene, 1,3 Butadiene, Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and many other toxic organic compounds. In developing countries, where large proportions of households rely on biomass fuels for cooking and space heating, concentrations of these air pollutants tend to be highest indoors. The fuels are typically burned in simple, inefficient, and mostly unvented household cook stoves, which, combined with poor ventilation, generate large volumes of smoke indoors. Moreover, cook stoves are typically used for several hours each day at times when people are present indoors, resulting in much higher exposure to air pollutants than from out-door sources. More than three billion people or half the world's populations, cook in their homes using traditional fire and stoves, burning biomass fuels such as woods and crop waste materials. Household members breathe in the toxic fumes from these cooking fires daily.

Introduction. The development of different ways of identifying hazard of substances, polluting the environment, that are alternative to routine methods for assessing health of different professional groups of people, as well as to tests on laboratory animals, has been assessed and summarized in a number of papers, and there is a growing volume of actual data on this issue. The analyzing pathogenic properties of microflora, isolated from polluted habitats or changed under the effect of pollutants, allows both assessing the risk of diseases with microbial etiology and identifying the influence of modifying factors on this process. Materials and methods. The research was performed on 150 cultures of Klebsiella pneumoniae, exposed to diethanolamine, phenol, sulfuric and nitric acids, taken at the level of their threshold limit value. The same cultures incubated without pollutants were used as a control group. Pathogenic factors were determined with the use of traditional methods, our modified methods (RNAase activity) and standard agents, kits and media. Results. The contact with all the pollutants resulted in a fair increase in adhesive, anti-Ig, lysozyme, anti-lysozyme and RNAase activities of microorganisms, their resistance to antibacterial action of blood serum, as well as to damaging action of lactoferrin. The bacteria increased their ability to synthesize a substance, immunologically similar to human lactoferrin. At the same time, there was a decrease in lipase activity, primarily referred to factors determining the bacterial ability to survive in the environment. Discussion. Therefore, the paper results can be presented as follows: being an independent and holistic section of modern microbiology, bacterial biochemistry unites the issues appeared to be far from each other - changes in factors of pathogenicity and persistence of microorganisms and technogenic changeability of the environment. Being quite urgent today, this problem may become aggravated in the course of further technological progress.

Introduction. The development of different ways of identifying hazard of substances, polluting the environment, that are alternative to routine methods for assessing health of different professional groups of people, as well as to tests on laboratory animals, has been assessed and summarized in a number of papers, and there is a growing volume of actual data on this issue. The analyzing pathogenic properties of microflora, isolated from polluted habitats or changed under the effect of pollutants, allows both assessing the risk of diseases with microbial etiology and identifying the influence of modifying factors on this process. Materials and methods. The research was performed on 150 cultures of Klebsiella pneumoniae, exposed to diethanolamine, phenol, sulfuric and nitric acids, taken at the level of their threshold limit value. The same cultures incubated without pollutants were used as a control group. Pathogenic factors were determined with the use of traditional methods, our modified methods (RNAase activity) and standard agents, kits and media. Results. The contact with all the pollutants resulted in a fair increase in adhesive, anti-Ig, lysozyme, anti-lysozyme and RNAase activities of microorganisms, their resistance to antibacterial action of blood serum, as well as to damaging action of lactoferrin. The bacteria increased their ability to synthesize a substance, immunologically similar to human lactoferrin. At the same time, there was a decrease in lipase activity, primarily referred to factors determining the bacterial ability to survive in the environment. Discussion. Therefore, the paper results can be presented as follows: being an independent and holistic section of modern microbiology, bacterial biochemistry unites the issues appeared to be far from each other - changes in factors of pathogenicity and persistence of microorganisms and technogenic changeability of the environment. Being quite urgent today, this problem may become aggravated in the course of further technological progress.

The exposure to air pollutants causes significant damage to health, and inefficient cooking and heating practices produce high levels of household air pollution, including a wide range of health-damaging pollutants such as fine particles, carbon monoxide and PAHs. The exposure to PAHs has been associated with the development of neoplastic processes, asthma, genotoxicity, altered neurodevelopment and inflammation. The effects on the induction of proinflammatory cytokines are attributed to the activation of AhR. However, the molecular mechanisms by which the PAHs produce proinflammatory effects are unknown. This study was performed on a group of 41 Mexican women from two rural communities who had stoves inside their houses, used wood as biomass fuel, and, thus, were vulnerable. According to the urinary 1-OHP concentration, the samples were stratified into two groups for determination of the levels of TNF-α, AhR, CYP1B1, miR-125b and miR-155 expression. Our results showed that the CYP1B1, TNF-α, miR-125b and miR-155 expression levels were not statistically different between women with the lowest and highest levels of 1-OHP. Interestingly, high levels of PAHs promoted augmented expression of AhR, which is a protein involved in the modulation of inflammatory pathways in vivo, suggesting that cell signaling of AhR may be implicated in several pathogenesis processes.

The use of solid biomass as cooking fuel is still predominant in developing countries. Indeed, around half of the world population relies on woody fuels to meet household energy needs using traditional and inefficient technologies. The use of biomass on a such vast scale has several negative effects on environment and human health. The substitution of traditional cooking devices with more efficient technologies is one of the most valuable options to reduce wood fuel demand with significant benefits for environment and biomass end users. These benefits regard the reduction of climate impact related to cooking activities, the decrease of anthropic pressure on forests, economic saving for the beneficiary households and the reduction of health pollutant emissions. Many efficient stove programmes have been implemented since the 1970s whose main target was to reduce the impact of biomass use on human health. In the last years, the mitigation potential of GHG emissions have become the predominant objective of stove projects. This is because after the adoption of the Kyoto protocol such programmes can claim access to carbon market as additional source of finance to overcome economic constraints which had limited success of many cookstove projects. This study analyses two cookstove carbon projects which are being implemented in Mozambique, one targeting the substitution of traditional charcoal stoves in Maputo and Pemba urban areas and the other the substitution of the traditional three-stone fire in Gilè natural reserve area. The aim is to assess environmental and social benefits related to these projects integrating laboratory and field data, assessing as well the entire woodfuel supply chains. Laboratory tests aim to provide an assessment of both traditional and improved stove efficiencies and emissions of GHG and other pollutants. Field tests provide real data on fuel consumption during baseline and project scenario, on efficient stove adoption and penetration among households, as well as on population perception of social and environmental benefits related to efficient cookstove usage. Laboratory tests show that efficient stoves, independently of the fuel used, have a better thermal efficiency and lower specific fuel consumption and firepower. This is particularly evident for thermal efficiency which increases from 15% to 33% in the case of wood stoves and from 21% to 38% for charcoal stoves. The increase in CO2 emission factors in g/MJ of efficient stoves (49% for wood and 52% for charcoal efficient stoves) is also a sign of improved combustion efficiency which lead to a reduction of product of incomplete combustion which are dangerous both for environment and human health. The number of families involved in the Maputo/Pemba programme in September 2016 were 11,479, expected to rise to 19,888 by the end of 2017. 4.000 household will be involved in the Gilè programme starting from May 2017. Field data analysis shows that the use of CH2200 allows to significantly reduce charcoal consumption. Mean daily fuel reduction per household was 1.71 kg/day/hh during the first year and 1.46 kg/day/hh for the second year of project activity. As a result, GHG emission reduction achieved by March 2016 was 27,618 tons of CO2 equivalents. The programme is estimated to reduce 362,594 tons of CO2 equivalent by the end of 7th year of project activity. The methodology used to estimate emission reduction with the purpose of claiming carbon credit emission does not envisage the emission related to charcoal life cycle. Including such emission, the project could save up to 529,698 tons of CO2 eq., overall 46% higher. The calculation of potential emission reduction for Gilè programme is based on the baseline fuel consumption and the differences in stove thermal efficiencies calculated during laboratory tests. This is estimated to be 48,070 tons CO2 eq. Contribution to climate change is not only limited to GHG emissions but it is also related to other climate pollutants emitted as result of incomplete combustion. The use of efficient cooking technologies has the potential to reduce such pollutants. For Maputo/Pemba programme this reduction is estimated to be 17,872 tons CO2 eq. and 23,555 tons CO2 eq. for the Gilè project. It is not in the scope of this study to assess direct effect of air pollution on human health, however, the use of efficient cookstove has the potential to reduce exposure to such pollutants. For instance, Rocket Works stove reduces emission of fine particulate matter (PM1) up to 86% and CH2200 stove up to 57%. In Maputo and Pemba households use a substantial part of their budget to purchase charcoal. During the first year of project, thanks to the use of efficient stoves, families saved up to 116 US dollars. Such high saving allows them to payback the investment sustained to buy the stove in only 25 days. Charcoal production is one of the main causes of deforestation and land degradation, the reduction of charcoal demand achievable through Maputo/Pemba project activities have the potential to save up to 2,003 hectares of Miombo forests. In Gilè area the impact of cooking activities is estimated to be low, since only a small part of households cut trees for the purpose of wood harvesting. However, it is estimated that around 90 hectares can be saved with this project. This study is part of a wider research carried out by the GESAAF department of the University of Florence in collaboration with CarbonSink, a spinoff of the same university. Further research will be conducted in the following years on cookstove performance, efficiency drop over years and durability of project technologies. Furthermore, it has been planned to update laboratory equipment to include other substances in the pollutant analysis. Moreover, it is under study a monitoring campaign to assess household exposure to health damaging emissions.

碩士
國立臺北科技大學
環境規劃與管理研究所
95
Health-Damaging Pollutants (HDPs) and Green House Gases (GHGs) are two major study fields in the air resource management. Many technologies and policies, such as energy conservation, renewable energy and transportation sector measures, may simultaneously reduce both HDP and GHG emissions. Researchers and decision makers should no longer treat air pollution and climate change as separate topics, because their emission sources and control strategies are closely related. In this research, an Integrated Air Resource Co-Benefits Assessment Model was proposed. Damage function approach was conducted to quantify the short-term /long-term social benefits of the HDP and GHG reductions. In this model, the input costs of technologies or policies are related to the final social benefits, and the benefits of HDP and GHG reductions are integrated for cost/benefit evaluation. As the technical, economic, social factors involved in this model, external costs are internalized and considered by policy makers. The integrated cost/benefit evaluation of HDP and GHG reductions are very important in any decision making process.

We use more than 100 000 chemicals in our daily lives to promote health, treat disease, facilitate transportation, use in industrial processes, grow food and access clean water. While these developments have improved human lives, many of these compounds ultimately end up in our seas and oceans where they represent a threat to marine life, ourselves and our continued use of the oceans to treat our waste, provide us with food and offer us recreation. Many of the pollution problems of previous decades seem to have been resolved, in the developed world, or at least managed to minimise their environmental impacts. However, despite treatments being available that reduce their damaging qualities, a potent mixture of toxic compounds enter the marine environment every day along with other potentially harmful additions including heat, noise and light and non-native species. The question thus arises: is pollution a problem that has really been solved? How well are we managing traditional pollutants? What are the challenges we still face today? What are the upcoming marine pollution challenges that face society? This volume describes the different marine pollutants, the science behind measuring their ecological impacts and how they are monitored in the environment, including traditional and new management approaches. This is an up-to-date account of marine pollution within the broad ecological and social context of a growing, technologically advanced, global population.

Almost half of the world population rely on solid (biomass fuel and coal) for cooking, heating and lightning purpose. The resultant exposure to fine particulate matter from household air pollution is the seventh-largest risk factor for global burden of disease causing between 2.6 and 3.8 million premature deaths per year. The health effect ranges from cardiovascular, respiratory, neurocognitive and reproductive health effect. The most important are cardiovascular and respiratory health effects; others are the risk of burns and cataract in the eyes. Biomass fuel is any living or recently living plant and animal-based material that is burned by humans as fuels, for example, wood, dried animal dung, charcoal, grass and other agricultural residues. Biomass fuels are at the low end of the energy ladder in terms of combustion efficiency and cleanliness. Incomplete combustion of biomass contributes majorly to household air pollution and ambient air pollution. A large number of health-damaging air pollutants are produced during the incomplete combustion of biomass. These include respirable particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, benzene, 1, 3 butadiene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and many other toxic organic compounds. In this article, health effects of biomass fuel use will be described in details highlighting the most affected systems and organs of the body.

Combustion dynamics is a prominent problem in the design and operation of low-emission gas turbine engines. Even modest changes in fuel composition, or operating conditions can lead to damaging vibrations in a combustor that was otherwise stable. For this reason, active control has been sought to stabilize combustors that must accommodate fuel variability, new operating conditions, etc. Active control of combustion dynamics has been demonstrated in a number of laboratories, single-nozzle test combustors, and even on a fielded engine. In most of these tests, active control was implemented with closed-loop feedback between the observed pressure signal and the phase and gain of imposed fuel perturbations. In contrast, a number of recent papers have shown that open-loop fuel perturbations can disrupt the feedback between acoustics and heat release that drives the oscillation. Compared to the closed-loop case, this approach has some advantages because it may not require high-fidelity fuel actuators, and could be easier to implement. This paper reports experimental tests of open-loop fuel perturbations to control combustion dynamics in a complete gas turbine engine. Results demonstrate the technique was very successful on the test engine, and had minimal effect on pollutant emissions.