scholarly journals Case Study on Anthropogenic Air Pollution in Nagpur City

Author(s):  
Mukul Dayaramani

Air pollution is a very serious problem worldwide. Anthropogenic air pollution is mostly related to the combustion of various types of fuels. Air pollutant levels remain too high and air quality problems are still not solved. The presence of pollutants in the air has a harmful effect on the human health and the environment. Good air quality is a prerequisite for our good health and well-being. Nagpur city is located in Maharashtra state of central India. Business hub and increased industrialization in study area is affecting the environment adversely. n. Changing life style of corporate community and their effects on other population enhancing the contamination of environment

2019 ◽  
Vol 266 ◽  
pp. 02013
Author(s):  
E.M.A Zawawi ◽  
A.Z Azaiz ◽  
S.N Kamaruzzaman ◽  
N.M. Ishak ◽  
F.N.M Yussof

This study discusses the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in two refurbished private schools in Shah Alam, Selangor. The level of IAQ may affect the comfort, health and well-being of the occupants of the building. Lack of monitoring IAQ in a school may affect the academic performance of the children. The objectives of the research are to observe the ventilation system used in the selected school and the comfort of the occupants; to measure the IAQ; and finally to provide an improvement plan for better air quality. The result shows that the IAQ level of both schools was average, so both were classified as safe for occupation. It is anticipated that this study will benefit the school owners in making sure that their school buildings are conducive to teaching and learning.


Author(s):  
Muhammad Farhan Mohd Pu’ad ◽  
Teddy Surya Gunawan ◽  
Mira Kartiwi ◽  
Zuriati Janin

<span>United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals focuses on good health and well-being for all. Air pollution becomes a huge threat to delivering on the vision of a better world and related at least to Goal 3, 7, 11, and 13. In Malaysia, air pollution index were monitored on 68 locations. The Department of Environment monitors air quality using costly continuous air quality monitoring stations (CAQMs) installed at fixed locations of highly populated and industrial areas. The objective of this paper is to develop a portable air quality measurement system which can measure particulate matters (PM) smaller than 10 and 2.5 microns, and four hazardous gasses, including carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, ground level ozone and nitrogen dioxide, as well as humidity and temperature. Six sensors were used and validated using several rigorous experiments. The functionality of the system was evaluated by measuring sub-API readings in areas with low and high traffic volumes. Experimental results showed that the proposed system was highly responsive and able to detect the types and concentrations of air pollutants instantly. Furthermore, equipped with the mobile internet, geo-tagged GPS location and web server on Raspberry Pi, the developed portable system could be accessed remotely.</span>


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7310
Author(s):  
Paulo S. G. de Mattos Neto ◽  
Manoel H. N. Marinho ◽  
Hugo Siqueira ◽  
Yara de Souza Tadano ◽  
Vivian Machado ◽  
...  

Particulate matter (PM) is one of the most harmful air pollutants to human health studied worldwide. In this scenario, it is of paramount importance to monitor and predict PM concentration. Artificial neural networks (ANN) are commonly used to forecast air pollution levels due to their accuracy. The use of partition on prediction problems is well known because decomposition of time series allows the latent components of the original series to be revealed. It is a matter of extracting the “deterministic” component, which is easy to predict the random components. However, there is no evidence of its use in air pollution forecasting. In this work, we introduce a different approach consisting of the decomposition of the time series in contiguous monthly partitions, aiming to develop specialized predictors to solve the problem because air pollutant concentration has seasonal behavior. The goal is to reach prediction accuracy higher than those obtained by using the entire series. Experiments were performed for seven time series of daily particulate matter concentrations (PM2.5 and PM10–particles with diameter less than 2.5 and 10 micrometers, respectively) in Finland and Brazil, using four ANNs: multilayer perceptron, radial basis function, extreme learning machines, and echo state networks. The experimental results using three evaluation measures showed that the proposed methodology increased all models’ prediction capability, leading to higher accuracy compared to the traditional approach, even for extremely high air pollution events. Our study has an important contribution to air quality prediction studies. It can help governments take measures aiming air pollution reduction and preparing hospitals during extreme air pollution events, which is related to the following United Nations sustainable developments goals: SDG 3—good health and well-being and SDG 11—sustainable cities and communities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Petrowski ◽  
Stefan Bührer ◽  
Bernhard Strauß ◽  
Oliver Decker ◽  
Elmar Brähler

AbstractThere is a growing debate on the role of the physical environment and what constitute risk and protective factors for mental health. Various forms of air pollution have shown links to physical and mental health concerns and considering that Germany does not meet the WHO air quality standards—poor air quality affects a large proportion of Germans and is more important now than ever. This study investigates the physical environmental factor, air pollution, measured by particulate matter of particles with an aerodynamic diameter smaller than 10 µm (PM10) and effects on determinants of mental health and well-being (life satisfaction, stress resilience, anxiety, depression, and self-esteem). A representative sample of N = 3020 German adults with 54% females (46% males) and an age range between 18 and 92 years (M = 49.04, S.D. ± 17.27) was used. Multivariate linear regression analyses show that higher life satisfaction, more self-esteem and higher stress resilience are predicted by less air pollution (PM10). Individual income, age, and gender were taken into account for each regression model. Gender specific sub-analyses revealed similar predictions for PM10 and stress resilience whereas PM10 and self-esteem were only significantly associated for females. Associations between mental health or well-being determinants and air pollution (PM10) are found in the representative German sample.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 144-150
Author(s):  
Sana Akhtar ◽  
Aiman Riaz ◽  
Faiza Noor ◽  
Umaima Zainab ◽  
Faryal Asim

Air pollution has become one of the major emerging issues of the 21st century. It is a serious problem for almost every developing country. Due to the rapid increase in population and industrialization, the problem of air pollution has become more serious. Various environmentalists and scientists have conducted a variety of studies and surveys to know about the current situation and further how to deal with these situations. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the willingness of people living in the Southern region of Lahore to pay for improving the air quality. Statistical Package for Social Sciences software (version 20.0) was applied to determine the relationship between willingness to pay and powerful factors. A short time later stepwise, a linear regression model was built to determine the amount of positive Willingness to pay and to predict the mean value of Willingness to pay. The frequency and percentage of each variable were also determined through SPSS. The results revealed that out of 400 questionnaires filled by the citizens 82% of the citizens of southern Lahore showed positive response as they were in favor of Willingness to pay for improved air quality which shows their deep concern about the rising issue. And only 18% were not ready for Willingness to pay for improved air quality, the only reason for this negative response was the unawareness among the citizens. This shows that more awareness is required to create more knowledge among the citizens of Southern Lahore that bad air quality has so many depressing impacts on their health and well-being.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 788
Author(s):  
Rong Feng ◽  
Hongmei Xu ◽  
Zexuan Wang ◽  
Yunxuan Gu ◽  
Zhe Liu ◽  
...  

In the context of the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), strict lockdown policies were implemented to control nonessential human activities in Xi’an, northwest China, which greatly limited the spread of the pandemic and affected air quality. Compared with pre-lockdown, the air quality index and concentrations of PM2.5, PM10, SO2, and CO during the lockdown reduced, but the reductions were not very significant. NO2 levels exhibited the largest decrease (52%) during lockdown, owing to the remarkable decreased motor vehicle emissions. The highest K+ and lowest Ca2+ concentrations in PM2.5 samples could be attributed to the increase in household biomass fuel consumption in suburbs and rural areas around Xi’an and the decrease in human physical activities in Xi’an (e.g., human travel, vehicle emissions, construction activities), respectively, during the lockdown period. Secondary chemical reactions in the atmosphere increased in the lockdown period, as evidenced by the increased O3 level (increased by 160%) and OC/EC ratios in PM2.5 (increased by 26%), compared with pre-lockdown levels. The results, based on a natural experiment in this study, can be used as a reference for studying the formation and source of air pollution in Xi’an and provide evidence for establishing future long-term air pollution control policies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-176
Author(s):  
Kellie Schneider ◽  
Diana Cuy Castellanos ◽  
Felix Fernando ◽  
Jeanne A. Holcomb

Food deserts, areas in which it is difficult to obtain affordable, nutritious food, are especially problematic in low-income neighbourhoods. One model for addressing food hardship and unemployment issues within low-income food deserts is a cooperative grocery store. Through the cooperative model, the grocery store can serve as a cornerstone to address socio-economic marginalisation of low-income neighbourhoods and improve the health and well-being of its residents. It is important for communities and policymakers to be able to assess the effectiveness of these types of endeavours beyond traditional economic factors such as profitability. This article uses a systems engineering approach to develop a framework for measuring the holistic impact of a cooperative grocery store on community health and well-being. This framework encompasses values that characterise the relationship between food retail, economic viability and social equality. We develop a dashboard to display the key metrics for measuring the economic, social and environmental indicators that reflect a grocery store’s social impact. We demonstrate the usefulness of the framework through a case study of a full-service cooperative grocery store that is planned within the city of Dayton, OH.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Amanda K. Winter ◽  
Huong Le ◽  
Simon Roberts

Abstract This paper explores the perception and politics of air pollution in Shanghai. We present a qualitative case study based on a literature review of relevant policies and research on civil society and air pollution, in dialogue with air quality indexes and field research data. We engage with the concept of China's authoritarian environmentalism and the political context of ecological civilization. We find that discussions about air pollution are often placed in a frame that is both locally temporal (environment) and internationally developmentalist (economy). We raise questions from an example of three applications with different presentations of air quality index measures for the same time and place. This example and frame highlight the central role and connection between technology, data and evidence, and pollution visibility in the case of the perception of air pollution. Our findings then point to two gaps in authoritarian environmentalism research, revealing a need to better understand (1) the role of technology within this governance context, and (2) the tensions created from this non-participatory approach with ecological civilization, which calls for civil society participation.


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