Real-Time Measurements of Indoor-Outdoor Exchange of Gaseous and Particulate Atmospheric Pollutants in an Urban Area.

Air pollution is one of the greatest environmental risks to health, causing millions of deaths and deleterious health effects worldwide, especially in urban areas where citizens are exposed to high ambient levels of pollutants, also influencing indoor air quality (IAQ). Many sources of indoor air are fairly obvious and well known, but the contribution of outside sources to indoor air still leads to significant uncertainties, in particular the influence that environmental variables have on outdoor/indoor pollutant exchange mechanisms. This is a critical aspect to consider in IAQ studies.

Challenges in quantification of photocatalytic NO abatement effectiveness under real world exposure conditions illustrated by a case study.

Health risks due to NO exposure commonly exceed acceptable levels in modern societies. Among the measures to reduce such risks, photocatalytic materials present a promising technology. However, while the pollutant remediation of such materials has been extensively validated in laboratory studies, the performance under real world environmental exposure conditions is still subject to controversy.

Predicting the Olea pollen concentration with a machine learning algorithm ensemble.

Air pollution in large cities produces numerous diseases and even millions of deaths annually according to the World Health Organization. Pollen exposure is related to allergic diseases, which makes its prediction a valuable tool to assess the risk level to aeroallergens. However, airborne pollen concentrations are difficult to predict due to the inherent complexity of the relationships among both biotic and environmental variables.

NO removal efficiency of urban photocatalytic pavements at pilot scale.

Photocatalytic technology implemented in construction materials is a promising solution to contribute to alleviate air quality issues found in big cities. Photocatalysis has been proved able to mineralise most harmful contaminants. However, important problems associated with monitoring the efficiency of these solutions under real conditions still remain, including the lack of affordable analytical tools to measure NO concentrations with enough accuracy.

Comparison of modeling with empirical calculation of diffuse and fugitive methane emissions in a Spanish landfill.

One of the most significant environmental problems arising from landfills is the emission of methane into the atmosphere. In this study, methane emissions from a currently in-use Spanish landfill were modeled as well as being experimentally measured using a two-step method. The first step involved a qualitative walkover survey to detect where gases were being emitted on the surface of the landfill.