Air Pollution - Contents

Block 8: Environmental Issues and Public Health - Air Pollution: Contents

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this module, you should:

understand air pollution in its historical context;
have a basic insight into the main outdoor (ambient) air pollutants and their health and environmental impacts.
be able to identify the most common sources of air pollution;
understand the basic methods of assessing air quality;
be able to provide an overview of the South African legal and regulatory framework for controlling air emissions;
be able to carry out a survey of pertinent international practice and relevant International Conventions;

OUTCOMES:

Participants will develop a basic understanding and knowledge of outdoor air pollution - the main air pollutants found in developed areas (towns, cities and their environs), the health and environmental impacts of these air pollutants, the principle sources of air pollution, methodologies available for the estimation of exposure to air pollution, the management tools available to address air pollution issues and the South African and international regulatory /legal framework pertaining to air pollution.

OUTLINE OF CORE MATERIALS

Introduction: brief history; introduction to the main concepts; global burden of air pollution related disease; the essential elements of an AQMS.

An overview of the main air pollutants and their impacts:
The main air pollutants; their health impacts; exposure - response relationships:
Principal sources of air pollution; estimating emission rates

The influence of the atmospheric processes

Methods of assessing air quality:

Accidental/ abnormal air emissions:
Estimating health risks (WHO method) and the burden of disease due to air pollution:
Cleaner Production; opportunities for emission reduction:

Air Pollution Regulations.

Water and land pollution.

Air Quality Management, the Environmental Impact Assessment, Life Cycle Assessment.

Indoor air pollution.

Case studies

REFERENCES:

Library Resources:
1. WHOa, Guidelines for Air Quality, WHO, Geneva, 2000.
2. WHOb, Air Quality Guidelines for Europe (2nd Edition), WHO Regional Publications, No. 91 (2000).
3. WHOc, Monitoring ambient air quality for health impact assessment, WHO Regional Publications, European Series No. 85 (1999).
4. WHOd, Health Impact Assessment of Air Pollution in the WHO European Region, WHO European Centre for Environmenatl Health (ECEH) (2001).
5. Holgate S. T., Samet J. M., Koren R. L. and Maynard R. L. (Eds.) Air Pollution and Health, Academic Press (1999).
6. Lipfert W. F., Air Pollution and Community Health, van Nostrand Reinhold (1994).
7. Hester R E and Harrison R M (Eds.), Air Pollution and Health, The Royal Society of Chemistry (1998) (Issues in Environmental Science and Technology Series).

Web Resources:
1. WHO sites:
  www.who.dk/eprise/main//WHO/Progs/AIQ/Home
  http://www.euro.who.int/eprise/main/WHO/Progs/AIQ/Activities/20040428_2 (AirQ software and methodology reports).
2. US EPA site:
  www.epa.gov (a large repository of information).
3. UK sites:
  www.airquality.co.uk (UK system).
4. EU site:
  http://themes.eea.eu.int/Specific_media/air.
5. Canadian site:
  http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/air.htm (Ontario, Canada, Ministry of Environment).
6. City of Cape Town site:
  www.capetown.gov.za.
7. EU site (BREFs):
  http://eippcb.jrc.es/pages/FActivities.htm (site of the European Integrated pollution Prevention and Control Bureau, best available techniques reference documents - BREFS).

Selected Journal Resources:
1. Per Nafstad, Lise Lund Håheim, Torbjørn Wisløff, Frederick Gram, Bente Oftedal, Ingar Holme, Ingvar Hjermann,5 and Paul Leren. Urban Air Pollution and Mortality in a Cohort of Norwegian Men, Environmental Health Perspectives, VOLUME 112 | NUMBER 5 | April 2004
2. Mark W. Frampton, Systemic and Cardiovascular Effects of Airway Injury and Inflammation: UltrafineParticle Exposure in Humans, Environmental Health Perspectives • VOLUME 109 | SUPPLEMENT 4 | August 2001
3. Robert Maynard, Key airborne pollutants—the impact on health, Science of the Total Environment xx (2004) xxx– xxx (accepted April 2004)
4. Ning Li,a Minqi Hao,a,d Robert F. Phalen,b,d William C. Hinds,c,d and Andre E. Nel a, Particulate air pollutants and asthma A paradigm for the role of oxidative stress in PM-induced adverse health effects, Clinical Immunology 109 (2003) 250–265
5. Yun-Chul Hong, Jong-Han Leem, Eun-Hee Ha, and David C. Christiani, PM10 Exposure, Gaseous Pollutants, and Daily Mortality in Inchon, South Korea, Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. …, 1999
6. KEN DONALDSON,*VICKI STONE,* † PAUL J. A. BORM, et al, OXIDATIVE STRESS AND CALCIUM SIGNALING IN THE ADVERSE EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PARTICLES (PM 10 ), Free Radical Biology & Medicine, Vol. 34, No. 11, pp. 1369–1382, 2003
7. Mette Sørensen, Herman Autrup, Peter Møller, Ole Hertel, Linking exposure to environmental pollutants with biological effects, Mutation Research 544 (2003) 255–271
8. N Künzli, R Kaiser, S Medina, M Studnicka, O Chanelet al, Public-health impact of outdoor and traffic-related air pollution: a European assessment THE LANCET • Vol 356 • September 2, 2000
9. Kristin Aunan *,Xiao-Chuan Pan a , b, Exposure-response functions for health effects of ambient air pollution applicable for China –a meta-analysis, Science of the Total Environment 329 (2004 )3 –16
10. PAUL J. VILLENEUVE, MARK S. GOLDBERG, DANIEL KREWSKI, RICHARD T. BURNETT AND YUE CHEN, Fine Particulate Air Pollution and All-Cause Mortality within the Harvard Six-Cities Study: Variations in Risk by Period of Exposure, AEP Vol. 12, No. 8 Villeneuve et al. November 2002: 568–576
11. K Donaldson, V Stone, A Clouter, L Renwick, W MacNee, Ultrafine particles, Occup Environ Med 2001;58:211–216
12. Bert Brunekreef, Stephen T Holgate, Air pollution and health (Review), Lancet 2002; 360: 1233–4212.
13. Jennifer K. Mann,1 Ira B. Tager,1 Fred Lurmann,2 Mark Segal,3 Air Pollution and Hospital Admissions for Ischemic Heart Disease in Persons with Congestive Heart Failure or Arrhythmia, Environmental Health Perspectives • VOLUME 110 | NUMBER 12 | December 2002
14. Benoit Nemery, Peter H M Hoet, Abderrahim Nemmar, The Meuse Valley fog of 1930: an air pollution disaster, Lancet 2001; 357: 704–08.
15. Jordi Sunyer, Ferran Ballester, Alain Le Tertre, Richard Atkinson, Jon G.Ayres et al,Francesco Forastiere f The association of daily sulfur dioxide air pollution levels with hospital admissions for cardiovascular diseases in Europe (The Aphea-II study) European Heart Journal (2003)24 ,752 –760.
16. Laura C. Green, 1 Edmund A. C. Crouch, Michael R. Ames, and Timothy L. Lash, What’s Wrong with the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for Fine Particulate Matter (PM2 5 )?, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 35, 327–337 (2002).