Natural mineral dust storms (DS) from the Arabo-African region blow over the Mediterranean, reach Israel, and add to the anthropogenic particulate pollution. The effects of mineral dust on air quality in Israel were investigated using only PM10 and PM2.5 automatic measurements. The method does not require any other inputs such as satellite observations, model back-trajectories, dust forecast mo...

Anthracofibrosis, defined as bronchial luminal narrowing with black pigmentation of the overlying mucosa, has been attributed to tuberculosis. Three patients with anthracofibrosis without mycobacterial infection are described who had previous occupational exposure to mixed dusts. CT scans showed calcified hilar lymph nodes in two patients. Surgical biopsy in one patient and autopsy in another r...

An improvement of the estimation of mineral dust longwave, direct radiative forcing is presented. It is based on recent developments that combine Sun photometer and multiwavelength lidar data to retrieve range-resolved coarseand fine-mode extinction coefficients. The forcings are calculated separately for each mode, and their sum is compared to the classical approach in which only the total ext...

We found three cases of pneumoconiosis among those workers who had been dealing with tonoko (a mineral powder) for more than ten years at a shop making wooden furniture in Sendai, Japan. In the factory the workers were exposed to tonoko dust and had been inhaling it for a long time. Until now, this disease has not been found in employees of furniture factories; and, furthermore, tonoko has not ...

A task-specific exposure matrix was designed for workers installing building insulation materials. A priori, a matrix element was defined by type of task (installer or helper), type of work area (attic spaces or wall cavities) and type of insulation material (slabs from mineral wool, fiberglass or flax; loose-fill cellulosic material or perlite). In the laboratory a mock-up (full scale) of a on...

Occupational exposure to mineral dust causes pneumoconiosis and other diseases. A cytotoxicity assay to predict the potential of minerals to cause disease would be of great value as a prevention strategy. This study compares the ability of several minerals to generate the more potent oxidizing agent, hydroxyl radical (.OH), and their cytotoxicity and lipid peroxidation potentials. Crystalline s...

Deposited mineral dust and black carbon are known to reduce the albedo of snow and enhance melt. Here we estimate the contribution of anthropogenic black carbon (BC) to snowmelt in glacier accumulation zones of Central Asia based on in-situ measurements and modelling. Source apportionment suggests that more than 94% of the BC is emitted from mostly regional anthropogenic sources while the remai...

[1] A model-based investigation of the transport, distribution and deposition of mineral dust in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) is performed by using the GFDL Atmospheric Model (AM2). The study represents an attempt to quantify the contribution of the major sources by tagging dust based on its origin. We evaluate the contribution of each source to the emission, distribution, mass burden and depos...

[1] Characteristics of optical and chemical properties of dust aerosol over Beijing and their relation were studied in the spring dust season, 2006 to understand the impact of dust and anthropogenic aerosol on the regional climate. Two dust plumes (DS1 and DS2) were identified with contrasting physicochemical properties. Strong absorbing of aerosol at 439 nm was observed, probably due to the si...