Air quality in industrial environments has been studied since the second half of the 20th century. Well-documented results show that exposure to chemical pollutants through their consumption, production, and storage can damage workers' health. New research focusing on non-industrial environments has shown unexpected correlations between air quality and health effects. Artificial ventilation sys...

One of the gaping holes in the public health tool kit is the lack of comprehensive knowledge about the occurrence and toxic effects of the full spectrum of chemicals emitted by industrial facilities. The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has taken a small step toward filling this void by assembling selected basic toxics data for North America with the 10 June 2009 release of its 12...

Supercritical water oxidation provides a powerful means to transform toxic organic materials into simple, relatively inert oxides. Over the past decade, our understanding of the fundamental chemistry of this process has increased markedly. Many fascinating research papers are appearing from laboratories around the world, on the use of the technique for the decomposition of a variety of organic ...

Human and animal toxicology has had a profound impact on our historical and current understanding of air pollution health effects. Early animal toxicological studies of air pollution had distinctively military or workplace themes. With the discovery that ambient air pollution episodes led to excess illness and death, there became an emergence of toxicological studies that focused on industrial ...

A brief history of air pollution Accounts of air pollution in the UK date back to the 13 century. Early occurrences resulted from rapid population growth, urbanisation and changes in fuel use – in particular the medieval switch from wood to coal, especially in brick kilns and domestic fireplaces. Coal combustion in industrial furnaces, boilers and, above all, in domestic fireplaces, was the mai...

In the past century, the drastic advancement in industrialization and technology and the growth in human population have driven a change to the environment to a scope that is unprecedented in human history. The production of large amounts of synthetic industrial and biomedical chemicals, as well as unwanted pollutants pose destructive consequences to our ecosystem and impose negative health eff...

Stormwater run-off from for example industrial areas as well as roads with heavy traffic may contain considerable amounts of pollutants. Run-off from these areas may require special treatment to fully comply with existing environmental regulations and safeguard the receiving water bodies. In this study, flocculation and membrane filtration are tested to evaluate their efficacy in removing heavy...

Gas-particle flows are involved in various industrial applications in the energy, oil and gas fields, like coal gasification, production of light hydrocarbons by fluid catalytic cracking, catalytic combustion and different treatments aiming to reduce or eliminate pollutants. In addition, gas-particle flows take part to interesting natural phenomena, like volcanic eruptions, and their understand...

Phenolic derivatives are used as raw materials in textiles, pulp and paper, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, oil-refineries and leather industries. These heterocyclic aromatic chemicals are among the most frequently found pollutants in industrial effluents. Since these compounds are toxic either through ingestion, inhalation or contact even at low concentrations, biodegradation of the effluent is...