Children are at risk for adverse health outcomes from occupant-controllable indoor airborne contaminants in their homes. Data are needed to design residential interventions for reducing low-income children's pollutant exposure. Using customized air quality monitors, we continuously measured fine particle counts (0.5 to 2.5 microns) over a week in living areas of predominantly low-income househo...

One hundred and sixty two people working in various departments of cotton spinning and weaving mills measured and recorded their own peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) at two hourly intervals during Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday of the same work week, from waking in the morning throughout the day until going to bed and a last time the following morning after waking. The circadian rhythm in PEFR...

Greenhouse operations are an important sector of the horticulture industry, also known as the Green Industry, accounting for nearly 2 million US jobs and about $148 billion in output. It is a work environment that can result in increased exposure to respiratory hazards because of its fundamentally enclosed nature. In addition, high concentrations of bioaerosols may be aerosolized by work activi...

Organop iosphat, insecticides, such as Vapona, Naled, and Rabon, are highly potent inhibitors of an enzyme found in human monocytes. The enzyme, a specific monocyte esterase, could be inhibited by Vapona in blood samples via airborne contamination at levels easily achieved from commercial slow-release insecticide strips. Fifty percent inhibition (150)-as measured on the Hemalog D ( Technicon Co...

: This paper presents cooperative path planning approach for multi UAVs to detect, model and track the shape of a contaminant cloud boundary. The objective of this research study is to manage the resources (airborne sensors) such as to determine the boundary of a cloud and track its motion with minimum information. The dispersing model of the contaminant cloud boundary is based on SCIPUFF. The ...

We simulated a sensor network that detects and tracks the release of harmful airborne contaminants in an urban environment. The simulation determines sensor placement in that environment. The effort required integration of models from computational fluid dynamics (CFDs), combinatorial optimization, and population mobility dynamics. These CFD models, coupled with population mobility models, faci...

A commonly used tread rubber formulation was cured in the laboratory under conditions simulating vulcanization in the Bag-O-Matic press. Volatile emissions were collected on charcoal and analyzed by combined GC-mass spectrometry. The compounds identified were either contaminants present in the raw material or reaction products. Some of these compounds were also identified in charcoal tube sampl...

The Gaussian plume model is a standard approach for studying the transport of airborne contaminants due to turbulent diffusion and advection by the wind. This paper reviews the assumptions underlying the model, its derivation from the advection-diffusion equation, and the key properties of the plume solution. The results are then applied to solving an inverse problem in which emission source ra...

We introduce a novel hybrid of two fields-Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Agent-Based Modeling (ABM)-as a powerful new technique for urban evacuation planning. CFD is a predominant technique for modeling airborne transport of contaminants, while ABM is a powerful approach for modeling social dynamics in populations of adaptive individuals. The hybrid CFD-ABM method is capable of simulati...

Exposure to dust may involve co-exposure to agents which are allergens, together with those which are pro-inflammatory. To study the effects of such a co-exposure, the humoral and inflammatory responses were studied in guinea pigs inhaling the T-cell-dependent antigen ovalbumin (OVA) and the inflammatory agents (1 --> 3)-beta-D-glucan and lipopolysaccharide (LPS). The effects were evaluated as ...