Regional Air Pollution Study

Fig. 12-2. NO-NO2-O3 ambient concentration profiles from average of four Regional Air Monitoring Stations (RAPS) in downtown St. Louis, Missouri (USA) on October 1, 1976. Source RAPS, Data obtained from the 1976 data file for the Regional Air Pollution Study Program. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC, 1976.

Data obtained from the 1976 data file of the Regional Air Pollution Study Program. U.S Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC, 1976. 

Among the multivariate statistical techniques that have been used as source-receptor models, factor analysis is the most widely employed. The basic objective of factor analysis is to allow the variation within a set of data to determine the number of independent causalities, i.e. sources of particles. It also permits the combination of the measured variables into new axes for the system that can be related to specific particle sources. The principles of factor analysis are reviewed and the principal components method is illustrated by the reanalysis of aerosol composition results from Charleston, West Virginia. An alternative approach to factor analysis. Target Transformation Factor Analysis, is introduced and its application to a subset of particle composition data from the Regional Air Pollution Study (RAPS) of St. Louis, Missouri is presented. 

Alpert, D. J.j Hopke, P. K. A Determination of the Sources of Airborne Particles Collected During the Regional Air Pollution Study, Atmospheric Environ., in press, I98I. 

Mansfeld, F. Regional Air Pollution Study Effects of Airborne Sulfur Pollutants on Materials" EPA-600/4-80-007, 1980. 

C.S. Burton and G.M. Hidy, "Regional Air Pollution Study Program... 

HIDY Withholding data is a strong term. Let s just say that because of the government bureaucracy, it is extremely difficult at times to obtain certain kinds of aerometric and emissions data for analysis. We have had particular problems in obtaining gas data from the Community Health Air Monitoring Program (CHAMP) and the Regional Air Pollution Study (RAPS). 

North Atlantic Regional Experiment (NARE) a study to assess the contribution of continental air pollution to the North Atlantic Ocean. 

Certainly, photochemical air pollution is not merely a local problem. Indeed, spread of anthropogenic smog plumes away from urban centers results in regional scale oxidant problems, such as found in the NE United States and many southern States. Ozone production has also been connected with biomass burning in the tropics (79,80,81). Transport of large-scale tropospheric ozone plumes over large distances has been documented from satellite measurements of total atmospheric ozone (82,83,84), originally taken to study stratospheric ozone depletion. 

Clean and Polluted Air. In the development of atmospheric chemistry, there has been an historic separation between those studying processes in the natural or unpolluted atmosphere, and those more concerned with air pollution chemistry. As the field has matured, these distinctions have begun to disappear, and with this disappearance has come the realization that few regions of the troposphere are completely unaffected by anthropogenic emissions. An operational definition of clean air could be based upon either the NMHC concentration, or upon the NOjj concentration. 

This 10-year longitudinal study is focused on the potential associations between ambient air pollution and respiratory health in children. The objectives are to document the respiratory growth of study participants, to assess whether ambient pollutants play a role in respiratory health, and to identify which pollutants are responsible for any observed effects. Ambient air quality is being monitored in each of twelve communities by centrally located regional stations, CA, which also collect standard meteorological data. Gaseous pollutants are monitored continuously, while ambient particle concentration and size are determined by a number of approaches. Additional exposure assessment occurs because of the establishment of the Particle Center, including more extensive particle size number, surface area, and volume distribution measurements. 

Let us consider the methods used to estimate the health impacts of particulate air pollution, followed by those used to perform economic valuation of changes in illness and premature mortality, and discusses the appropriateness of transferring health benefit estimates from studies in other regions to developing countries. 

The assessment of air pollution in the Central Asian region is of great significance for environmental risk estimates. Case study countries, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are located in Central Asia and have long boundaries with China, the Asian part of Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Emissions from these countries as well as the... 

A report by the National Academy of Sciences Gxirdinating Committee on Air Quality Studies to the U.S. Senate concluded that available air monitoring data do not allow conclusions to be drawn about photochemical oxidant trends on a nation-wide basis. This report relied heavily on California data to illustrate trends, because so much information was available for that region. Maximal 1-h concentrations in the New Jersey cities of Bayonne and Newark were compared for 4-yr periods between 1%6 and 1973. These two cities exhibited 24% and 46% decreases, respectively. Emphasis was placed on differences in calibration procedure in various jurisdictions of air pollution control agencies. It is indicated that trend analysis for each station is still valid, despite the differences in calibration procedure. But values from different places must be compared cautiously. 

Congress attempted to correct that deficiency and other air pollution problems in a series of amendments to the 1963 act passed in 1965, 1966, 1967, and 1969. The 1965 amendments, for example, authorized the secretary of health, education and welfare to establish nationwide standards for automobile exhaust emissions. This legislation and later amendments also authorized the surgeon general to study the effects of air pollutants on human health, expanded local air quality programs, set compliance deadlines for meeting new air quality standards, established air quality control regions (AQCRs), and authorized research on low emission fuels and more fuel-efficient automobiles. 

As discussed in Chapter 1, much of our understanding of the chemistry of our atmosphere is based on early studies of air pollution these are often treated in the context of an overall system. This approach starts with the various sources of anthropogenic and natural emissions and tracks the resulting pollutants through their atmospheric transport, transformations, and ambient concentrations—on local, regional, and global scales—to their ultimate chemical and physical fates, including their impacts on our health and environment. 

This chapter will focus on PM ambient concentrations, which are key variables for exposure models, and are generally obtained by direct measurements in air quality monitoring stations. However, depending on the location and dimension of the region to be studied, monitoring data could not be sufficient to characterise PM levels or to perform population exposure estimations. Numerical models complement and improve the information provided by measured concentration data. These models simulate the changes of pollutant concentrations in the air using a set of mathematical equations that translate the chemical and physical processes in the atmosphere. 

---