Particulate matters have detrimental effects on human health, environment and economic. This pollutant may emit from anthropogenic or natural sources. On global scale, main proportion of natural particulate matter release to the atmosphere because of wind erosion from arid and semi-arid regions. Recently, the amount of dust coming from Arabian countries has dramatically increased, especially du...

Urban areas which are situated at the intersection of Alpine valleys are submitted to complex atmospheric flow patterns with significant impact on air quality. Local dynamics develop systems of slope and valley winds which interact ones with the others. Pollutants evolve according to chemical reactions homogeneously as gases and heterogeneously with particulate matters .There is a growing conce...

Humans are exposed to nanoparticles (NPs; diameter < 100 nm) from ambient air and certain workplaces. There are two main types of NPs; combustion-derived NPs (e.g., particulate matters, diesel exhaust particles, welding fumes) and manufactured or engineered NPs (e.g., titanium dioxide, carbon black, carbon nanotubes, silver, zinc oxide, copper oxide). Recently, there have been increasing report...

Higher concentration of SO2 and particulate matters was reported in surrounding areas of coal-fired industries which influences the distribution pattern of plants. Sensitive plant species are abolished from such areas, however, only pollution tolerant species survive under stress conditions. The present study was designed to investigate the vegetation composition around coal-fired industries i....

Sediment resuspension plays an important role in the transport and fate of heavy metals in the aquatic environment. In the present study, the release and binding forms of Cr, Cu, Zn, Pb under hydrodynamic conditions were investigated using an annular flume. Two sediments located at YLZ and GBD from Liangshui River, Beijing were resuspended for 10 hr at 0.159 and 0.267 m/sec, respectively. The c...

Although diesel engines have an advantage of low fuel consumption in comparison with gasoline engines, several problems must be solved. One of the major concerns is that diesel exhaust gas has more particle matters (PM) including soot, which are suspected to be linked to human carcinogen. As one of the key technologies, a diesel particulate filter (DPF) has been developed to reduce PM in the af...

Smoking in hospitals is banned in most of European countries; nevertheless, implementing a total smoking ban is particularly difficult and policy breaches are frequent. Aim of our study was to monitor the compliance with the smoke-free policy within a hospital district by measuring particulate matters (PM2.5). We designed an observational study and identified six sensitive locations within the ...