This study quantifies the effects of stressful weather and elevated air pollution levels on cause-specific mortality in Santiago, Chile, during the austral winters from 1988 to 1996. A temporal synoptic index (TSI) is used to form weather classes and air pollution classes. Prior applications of the TSI have formed classes solely on the basis of weather and may have systematically underestimated...

BACKGROUND People's perceptions of and attitudes towards pollution are critical for reducing exposure among people and can also influence the response to interventions that are aimed at encouraging behaviour change. This study assessed the perceptions and attitudes of residents in two slums in Nairobi regarding air pollution. METHODS We conducted focus group discussions with residents aged 18...

Carabid beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae) are one of the most studied soil groups in relation to heavy metal (HM) accumulation and use for bioindication of environmental pollution. Accumulation of Zn and Cu in carabid beetles was species-, sex- and trophic group-specific. No differences were found in HM contents between omnivorous and carnivorous species. The use of carabid beetles as indicators ...

This study proposes an integrative methodology for the environmental assessment of urban parks. Since most of the studies that investigated the environmental effect of urban parks have focused on only one or two nuisances, a difficulty exists in evaluating the overall influence of urban parks on environmental quality. Moreover, the small number of studies that have tried to suggest methodologic...

This research paper is an attempt towards analyzing real time air pollution data collected by PAQS sensor devices from some key locations in Bangalore. Air pollution in most of the metropolitan cities in India is turning out to be a major threat to our environment and hazardous to our health. Many infections and diseases related to lungs and throat are caused by the polluted air we breathe. The...

BACKGROUND Air pollution is known to be a leading cause of respiratory symptoms. Many cross-sectional studies reported that air pollution caused respiratory disease in Japanese individuals in the 1960s. Japan has laws regulating air pollution levels and providing compensation for victims of pollution-related respiratory disease. However, long-term changes in respiratory function and symptoms in...

Pollution of air resulting from toxic wastes emitted by large manufacturing plants and power-generation plants is a much-studied topic. The issue of health hazards arising from water pollution (see Wagner, Shamir, and Marks, 1994), storage and transportation of hazardous materials, and genetically-engineered food products has been a topic of intense debate and considerable research for the last...

BACKGROUND Exposure to fine-particulate air pollution has been associated with increased morbidity and mortality, suggesting that sustained reductions in pollution exposure should result in improved life expectancy. This study directly evaluated the changes in life expectancy associated with differential changes in fine particulate air pollution that occurred in the United States during the 198...

Pollution loads discharged from upstream development or human activities significantly degrade the water quality of a reservoir. The design of an appropriate water quality sampling network is therefore important for detecting potential pollution events and monitoring pollution trends. However, under a limited budgetary constraint, how to site an appropriate number of sampling stations is a chal...