Air Quality Considerations Research Articles

Critical Building Design Factors for Indoor Air Quality and Climate: Current Status and Predicted Trends

In recent yean, some building design professionals have become more aware of the indoor air quality concerns of owners and occupants and as a result, they have made some important changes to improve indoor air quality and climate. These changes include improvements in site planning and design; overall building design; ventilation and climate control systems; and materials selection and specifications. In addition, changes that limit the chemical contamination of building air during the construction process and during occupancy of buildings are also occurring; some of these changes are specified or controlled by design professionals. However, the majority of design professionals have little or no awareness of indoor air quality considerations. There is inadequate dissemination of building science research results to design professionals. There is a need for a useful general body of knowledge, theory, and practice regarding building-environment-occupant interactions. The lack of such knowledge, theory, and practice is an impediment to developing the necessary professional design tools and practices to address effectively indoor environmental quality and energy conservation issues.

The Nationwide Program for Maintenance of Air Quality

The initial state implementation plans concentrated on attainment of the ambient air quality standards in the relatively polluted areas of the country. Many of these plans must now be modified to ensure that the ambient standards will be maintained for the foreseeable future, and to ensure that significant deterioration of air quality in clean areas of the country is prevented. The existing implementation plans currently contain many measures which are applicable to the maintenance and deterioration efforts, but additional measures must also be developed. Many of these additional measures will involve future planning activities—most common of which will be land use planning activities. The point is made that, after existing sources have reduced their emissions to the lowest practical level, further air pollution control can only be accomplished by implementing rational planning procedures for management of any new sources of air pollution. This will require extensive cooperation among the air pollution control community; regional, state, and local planning agencies; state and local governments; and the general public in order to ensure that future land use plans include appropriate air quality considerations.

An Air Quality Approach to Natural Gas Curtailment

A natural gas curtailment plan based on air-quality considerations can significantly reduce peak pollutant concentration, decrease annual average concentrations for all cities participating in the plan, and be implemented immediately at negligible cost. This approach would consider the daily forecast of the dispersive capability of the atmosphere for the cities served by a pipeline system to curtail the supply to those with the best dispersive capability. This plan would provide the natural gas available on a given day to cities with the greatest need from the air-quality standpoint, improving their annual average ambient air quality, while those who were curtailed would switch to alternate fuels. These features were incorporated into a computer model. The success of this curtailment approach depends on accurate forecasts of the weather parameters, especially wind speed and mixing height, with the most benefits to a pipeline system serving widely spaced areas for a greater frequency of days in which the weather will be different in the various areas considered. Gas Abstr.

EMISSION STANDARDS IN AIR POLLUTION.

AN emission standard is a limit on the amount or concentration of a pollutant emitted from a source. The concentration of pollutant in the effluent may be stated subjectively in terms of its appearance to the eye or its odor, as determined by the nose; or objectively in terms of its weight or volume. Emission standards may be derived from process and equipment considerations, air quality considerations, or both. Emission standards sometimes reflect economic, sociological, and political considerations in addition to those which are technological. In some cases, we have the technological ability to control certain pollutants, but are not doing so for economic, sociological, or political reasons. However, despite considerable economic, sociological, and political pressure to regulate certain other emissions more stringently, we are not doing so because we lack an adequate technological ability for their more widespread control.