Over the last decades air pollution in the Alpine region has become an intensely debated subject at political and public levels. Clear evidence exists that heavy traffic along the major Alpine transport routes, such as the Brenner route through the Inn Valley (Austria) and over the Brenner Pass, has strongly contributed to the air pollution problem in Alpine valleys (e.g., Beauchamp et al., 200...

Ambient air pollution in urban and industrial areas in Greece was a serious environmental problem which was connected with rapid urbanization of cities, anarchic housing development without basic infrastructures and increases of motor vehicle fleet in urban regions. Especially Athens, witnessed severe air pollution problems in the decades 1960s‘-1970s‘ and the formation of the infamous brown-ye...

Similar populations of male and female office workers in San Francisco, which has little air pollution, and in Los Angeles, which experiences frequent photochemical smog episodes, were surveyed in an attempt to document excess respiratory symptoms and dysfunction in Los Angeles relatable to air pollution. Most results of forced expiratory tests, single-breath N2 tests, and questionnaire intervi...

Besides bacteria, viruses and air pollution can also lead to exacerbations of COPD. These episodes are characterised by recruitment of leukocytes (neutrophils, eosinophils, etc.), which leads to sputum purulence. The sputum colour/purulence is strongly correlated with markers of bronchial inflammation, like myeloperoxidase (green coloured) and leukocyte elastase present within these inflammator...

Heavy air pollution episodes in Beijing during January 2013: inorganic ion chemistry and source analysis using Highly Time-Resolved Measurements in an urban site B. Han, R. Zhang, W. Yang, Z. Bai, Z. Ma, and W. Zhang State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, China Beijing Municipal Research Institute of Envir...

Air pollution alerts broadcast directly to vulnerable individuals had a high level of acceptance, with 94 per cent of users surveyed reporting satisfaction or high satisfaction and 71 per cent reporting a change in their behaviour. Over the 21 months of the project, the forecasting system correctly forecast 27 out of 70 measured ozone (O3) episodes in the forecast domain, with 41 false negative...