Environmental Protection Department Research Articles

Pickleball Noise & Political Ploys: A Cape Cod Case Study

Pickleball is reportedly the fastest growing sport in America, increasing in participation nearly 40% from 2019 to 2021 according to one measure. With this rapid growth, many municipalities have repurposed existing outdoor tennis courts for use as pickleball courts with little consideration for the increase in noise pollution that often accompanies the change. In contrast to tennis, pickleball employs a solid paddle and hard plastic balls, generating frequent and distinctive noise impulses while in play. Additionally, the speed of play is typically faster with more impulses occurring more often, and courts can be denser, with two active pickleball courts fitting in the space of one tennis court. This study examines the noise measurements and ensuing politics of a case in Falmouth, MA, where the repurposed tennis courts were located as close as 25 feet from the property line of abutting residents. Short-term and long-term measurements were taken over a full day of activity and were largely evaluated to the Massachusetts Department of Environment Protection (MADEP) Noise Policy. In periods of high activity, it was found that paddle-ball impulses generated levels exceeding the MADEP criteria about once every two seconds on abutting properties.

Noise suppression plan for demolishing a parking garage

The headquarters of a pharmaceutical corporation planned to replace a parking garage with additional office buildings at the site in Silver Spring, Maryland. Neighbors adjacent to the location included private offices, public buildings, and residences. In order for approval to pursue construction projects in Montgomery County, Maryland, a Noise Suppression Plan must be submitted to the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection. The contractor responsible for demolishing the parking garage hired Scantek, Inc. to build and compose the Noise Suppression Plan. The Noise Suppression Plan offered a three-prong approach to insure a maximum sound level of 75 dBA at a 500-feet radius around the construction site during normal business-time period. The noise sources (construction equipment) were addressed by optimizing operations such as separating the noise sources (activity zones) within the site and limiting engine throttles (rpm) powering the hydraulic pumps. Additionally, acoustic barriers were installed for the entire perimeter of the construction site. Finally, acoustic absorption bulk-material was piled at strategically locations to reduce sound reflections and acoustic reaction energy. The construction company sent a notice to all neighbors adjacent to the parking garage ahead of the demolition to inform of schedules, expectations, and contact information. The demolition moved ahead without notable complaints from the neighbors.

Understanding RNG Gas Quality through Execution at Newtown Creek WRRF RNG

With each passing year a new record for global emissions is set (1) and policymakers and utility companies must embrace all avenues for decarbonization of energy. Universal adoption of electrification for every building and home by 2050 (2) is not practical, a balance must be struck between an equitable transition to cleaner energy supplies and ensuring uninterrupted, safe delivery of energy to utility customers. Renewable Natual Gas (RNG) is a molecule-for-molecule replacement of traditional geological natural gas with tangible life cycle emissions reductions. California continues to lead the way, initially starting with the low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) which aimed to reduce the carbon intensity of transportation fuel, and subsequently, Senate Bill 1440, which established RNG procurement goals including 12% RNG by 2030 (3). Other States are starting to adopt similar changes such as Oregon’s Senate Bill 98 and Colorado’s Senate Bill 21-264. As utilities attempt to transition the energy network, they must never compromise system safety and reliability. Recognizing that raw biogas has dangerous levels of contaminants of concern (COC) and must be conditioned to pipeline quality, its important utility companies better understand the methods with which methane is extracted and the testing protocols used to confirm performance. This paper highlights the equipment, processes, and testing regime National Grid and its partner the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP) deployed as part of its Newtown Creek RNG project, which successfully began injecting RNG into the NYC gas distribution network in October 2022.

The largest constructed treatment wetland project in the world: The story of the Everglades stormwater treatment areas

The Everglades Stormwater Treatment Areas (STAs) are the largest complex of constructed treatment wetlands in the world with a current treatment area of over 25,000 ha which will total approximately 25,900 ha by the end of 2025. They are designed to remove phosphorus from agricultural and urban stormwater runoff, and when there is available capacity, they can also receive and treat water from Lake Okeechobee. STA-treated water is then sent south to the Everglades to support restoration and maintenance of this unique ecosystem. The recommendation to build treatment wetlands began in 1988 with the Lake Okeechobee Technical Advisory Committee, and the mandate to operate and maintain the STAs continues today through operating permits and consent orders issued to the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The permits and consent orders set forth a stringent phosphorus water quality-based effluent limit (WQBEL) that must be met starting in 2026. SFWMD has conducted extensive research on treatment wetland function and phosphorus removal efficiency to support construction, management, and operation of the STAs to achieve the WQBEL. The most recent work has been conducted under the Restoration Strategies Science Plan. This 11-year research program began in 2013 and will continue through 2024 to address six key scientific questions aimed at assisting the SFWMD in meeting the WQBEL for discharges from the Everglades STAs. What follows in this Special Edition are articles discussing the results and conclusions from several of these studies.

Trinseo spills latex polymer into the Delaware River

Environmental regulators were forced to monitor drinking water in the Philadelphia area after a chemical plant operated by Trinseo in Bristol, Pennsylvania, spilled more than 30,000 L of an acrylic latex polymer into a tributary of the Delaware River. The spill started the night of March 24 and flowed into the river until the morning of March 26. Trinseo blamed an equipment failure, saying that the liquid overflowed a containment system and went down a storm drain. The Philadelphia Water Department initially warned residents that they may want to avoid drinking tap water but later said it was safe. The department tested the city’s water for butyl acrylate, ethyl acrylate, and methyl methacrylate and didn’t detect any contaminants. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection also didn’t detect any contaminants and hasn’t found any impact on fish or other wildlife. The chemical spill follows the Feb. 3 derailment of a train

Quantitative source apportionment and driver identification of soil heavy metals using advanced machine learning techniques

The accurate identification of pollution sources is essential for the prevention and control of possible pollution from soil heavy metals (SHMs). However, the positive matrix factorisation (PMF) model has been widely used as a conventional method for pollution source apportionment, and the classification of source apportionment results mainly relies on existing research and expert experience, which can result in high subjectivity in the source interpretation. To address this limitation, a comprehensive source apportionment framework was developed based on advanced machine learning techniques that combine self-organizing mapping and PMF with a gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) model. Analysis of Cd, Pb, Zn, Cu, Cr, and Ni in 272 topsoils showed that the average contents of six heavy metals were 1.72–13.79 times greater than corresponding background values, among which Cd pollution was relatively serious, with 66.91 % of the sites having higher values than the specified soil risk screening values. The PMF results revealed that 79.43 % of Pb was related to vehicle emissions and atmospheric deposition, 79.32 % of Cd and 38.84 % of Zn were related to sewage irrigation, and 85.97 % of Cr and 85.50 % of Ni were from natural sources. Moreover, the GBDT detected that industrial network density, water network density, and Fe2O3 content were the major drivers influencing each pollution source. Overall, the novelty of this study lies in the development of an improved framework based on advanced machine learning techniques that led to the accurate identification of the sources of SHM pollution, which can provide more detailed support for environmental protection departments to propose targeted control measures for soil pollution.

Oyster Death Assemblages as Archives of Historical Information for Studying Long-Term Trends in Oyster Body Size

A lack of location-specific, long-term data is a common obstacle to assessing trends in condition of coastal habitats over time. Without historical monitoring records or other documentation, filling such data gaps can be difficult, but sedimentary records such as death assemblages (DAs; the accumulated, identifiable remains of organisms that lived in or near the habitat in the past) are relatively untapped, location-specific archives of ecological information from the past. In 2018, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Paleontological Research Institution began a collaboration to study the use of oyster reef (Crassostrea virginica) DAs to address monitoring information gaps for oyster size. To-date, our project has sampled DAs from over 30 intertidal oyster reefs around Florida, radiocarbon dated most of the samples, and measured over 26,000 oyster shells. In the process, we found that C. virginica DAs are recent and high-resolution archives, with most samples from 15-35cm burial depth dating to within the last 80 years. We also developed a model to combine the DA data with real-time monitoring data on live oyster sizes from the same reefs to estimate reef- and locality-level size trends from as early as the 1960s to the present. This information is adding temporal context for our overwhelmingly short (~5-10 years) and recent (many post-2010) time series of live C. virginica size data. This case study demonstrates the potential utility of DA data for supplementing real-time monitoring data during the assessment and management of coastal habitats.

The Evolution Characteristics and Driving Mechanism of Urban Construction Land in Hong Kong since 1972

As an important spatial carrier of Hong Kong’s economic development, construction land provides a critical site for Hong Kong’s economic and social activities. The development of construction land directly affects the sustainable development of the city. Therefore, analysing the spatial and temporal evolution and driving mechanism of construction land in Hong Kong is of great significance in promoting sustainable urban development. This study aimed to evaluate the evolutionary characteristics and driving mechanism of construction land of Hong Kong in the period 1972–2020. Here, we extract construction land data from 1972 based on the historical map of Hong Kong. Then, we apply ArcGIS Pro and Fragstats software to calculate the rate of land expansion, land intensity, change in the centre of gravity, and landscape pattern index of construction land in Hong Kong from 1972–2020. Analysis shows the following: (1) The expansion of construction land in Hong Kong generally showed the characteristics of “rapid at first and then slowing down”, with 2010 as the peak of the 1970–2020 timeframe. (2) The sources of construction land transfer mainly came from cultivated land, sea areas, and forest land, which were mainly distributed in the New Territories. (3) The centre of gravity of construction land in Hong Kong showed the spatial characteristics of “slowly shifting to the northwest” during the study period, indicating that Hong Kong’s polycentric urban structure has been continuously strengthened. (4) The Spiltting index showed a tortuous upward trend, and the index of Mean Euclidean nearest neighbour distance showed a steady downward trend, which indicated that the landscape connectivity of city construction land steadily increased while the degree of fragmentation gradually increased. (5) The driving factors behind the expansion of Hong Kong construction land comes from population, economic, and traffic factors; the support factors come from location and policy factors; the elasticity factors mainly come from reclamation projects; the resistance factors mainly come from the restrictions of environmental protection departments, NGOs, and relevant laws on land reclamation.

Linking downstream river water quality to urbanization signatures in subtropical climate

Urbanization has several hydro-ecological effects on receiving waters. Hence, understanding how urbanization influences river water quality is essential for proper river management. However, an inappropriate approach that correlates urbanization signatures with water quality may result in spurious correlations. This study aimed to investigate the relationship of urbanization signatures with two key pollutants of stream flows: nutrients and pathogens. In contrast to the commonly used approaches that are based on economic or demographic metrics, our approach represents urbanization signatures using related anthropogenic activities and evaluates the effect of such activities on water quality parameters. The approach was also applied to evaluate the impacts of urbanization on nutrient and pathogen trends in the river waters of Hong Kong. The data were collected for the period of 1986–2020 from the Environmental Protection Department and monthly measurements were performed. Total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), Escherichia. coli (E. coli), and fecal coliforms (FC) showed consistently decreasing trends. However, the long-term seasonality of nutrients differed from that of pathogens. TP and TN exhibited homogenous seasonality with an approximately sinusoidal relationship from January to December, whereas the seasonality of pathogens was more complex and not dependent on river flow dilution effects. Additionally, urbanization impacts on station nutrients and pathogen characteristics were found to be unevenly distributed; under high water temperatures, nutrient concentrations were found to be decreased because of the rainfall dilution effect on river flows. Both urban point and diffuse sources of pollution significantly contributed to nutrient pollution in rivers. Furthermore, the concentrations of FC were not highly influenced by suspended solids, and dissolved oxygen was negatively correlated with all pathogens. Furthermore, the river flow rate was found to improve the water quality in terms of both nutrients and pathogens; urban point source pollution and river temperature alteration were shown to mainly contribute to seasonal variations in both nutrients and pathogens.

Feasibility of changing the area of the «Boryslavsky» local landscape reserve

The intervention of industrial production in the state of nature-reserved objects often causes a number of changes in natural ecosystems. In the city of Boryslav and its surroundings, industrial oil production has already caused a large number of environmental problems. In order to preserve the valuable native beech-fir forests surrounding the city on the southern side, the gene pool of the animal and plant world, and maintain the overall ecological balance in the Drohobych region, in 1984 the Boryslavsky landscape reserve of local importance was created, the area of which is 2,049.3 hectares. The territory of the reserve belongs to the Upper Dniester Beskydy district and is of particular importance for ensuring the water regime of the Tysmenytsia River and its tributaries, in the basin of which it is located. Also, 15 red book insect species were found here, which is about half of the red book entomofauna of the Transcarpathian region in general, and a number of insects that are under protection in European countries or recognized as rare, although they are not listed in the Red Book of Ukraine, 6 rare red book species of animals. Our research confirmed the presence of four Red Book grass species that have the nature conservation status of unassessed and two rare phytocenoses (the association of Alnetum (incanae)alliosum (ursini) and Fageto (sylvaticae)Abietum (albae) Hederosum. The territory of the reserve is located within the boundaries of South Boryslav of the oil field, which belongs to the most promising oil and gas-bearing areas of Precarpathia. In accordance with the approved limit for the special use of natural resources within the territories and objects of the nature reserve fund of local importance, in accordance with the state environmental protection department in the Lviv region, and on the basis of the permit issued by the local self-government body, the limited liability company "First Ukrainian Gas and Oil Company" began conducting geological exploration works on the site belonging to the territory of the Boryslavsky Reserve. the territory of the nature reserve, with an area of 2.5 hectares, located on the border of blocks 63 and 66, vid. 5 square meters 66 and part of ed. 1 and 2 sq. 63 of the Boryslav Forestry (territory of the reserve, altitude about 740 m above sea level) was cut down due to the need for geological exploration. As of today, this company has a special permit to use the subsoil of this area and plans to continue its activities. Given these circumstances, we consider it expedient to remove this area from the lands of the landscape reserve of local importance "Borislavsky", as it does not fulfill the functions assigned to it, namely: protection, preservation and restoration of valuable fir and beech plantations of natural origin with a typical formations with flora and fauna. In turn, we propose to include two plots of highly productive beech-fir groves from the lands of the State Enterprise "Drogobitske LG", Boryslav Forestry, namely sections No. 20 (area of 2.8 ha) and No. 22 (area of 1.2 ha) ) of the 44th quarter. These areas, bordering the lands of the landscape reserve, were selected as a result of the study of the tree stand, features of vegetation and soil cover, the existing natural undergrowth of beech and fir, the presence of plant and animal species included in the Red Book and subject to protection. Thus, the area of the reserve will increase by 1.5 hectares.

The Cost of Alternative Water Supply and Efficiency Options under Uncertainty: An Application of Modern Portfolio Theory and Chebyshev’s Inequality

Sea-level rise, population growth, and changing land-use patterns will further constrain Florida’s already scarce groundwater and surface water supplies in the coming decades. Significant investments in water supply and water demand management are needed to ensure sufficient water availability for human and natural systems. Section 403.928 (1) (b) of the Florida Statutes requires estimating the expenditures needed to meet the future water demand and avoid the adverse effects of competition for water supplies to 2040. This study considers the 2020–2040 planning period and projects (1) future water demand and supplies; and (2) the total expenditures (capital costs) necessary to meet the future water demand in Florida, USA. The uniqueness of this study compared with the previous studies is the introduction of a probabilistic-based approach to quantify the uncertainty of the investment costs to meet future water demand. We compile data from the U.S. Geological Survey, Florida’s Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, Florida’s Water Management Districts, and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to project the future water demand and supplies, and the expenditures needed to meet the demand considering uncertainty in the costs of alternative water supply options. The results show that the total annual water demand is projected to increase by 1405 million cubic meters (+15.9%) by 2040, driven primarily by urbanization. Using the median capital costs of alternative water supply projects, cumulative expenditures for the additional water supplies are estimated between USD 1.11–1.87 billion. However, when uncertainty in the project costs is accounted for, the projected expenditure range shifts to USD 1.65 and USD 3.21 billion. In addition, we illustrate how using Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) can increase the efficacy of investment planning to develop alternative water supply options. The results indicate that using MPT in selecting the share of each project type in developing water supply options can reduce the standard deviation of capital costs per one unit of capacity by 74% compared to the equal share allocation. This study highlights the need for developing more flexible funding strategies on local, regional, and state levels to finance additional water supply infrastructure, and more cost-effective combinations of demand management strategies and alternative water supply options to meet the water needed for the state in the future.

Spatial modeling of two mosquito vectors of West Nile virus using integrated nested Laplace approximations

AbstractThe abundance of Culex restuans and Culex pipiens in relation to ecological predictors is poorly understood in regions of the United States where their ranges overlap. It is suspected that these species play different roles in spreading West Nile virus (WNV) in these regions, but few studies have modeled these species separately or accounted for spatial correlation using Bayesian methods. We used mosquito surveillance data collected by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection from 2002 to 2016 and integrated nested Laplace approximations with the stochastic partial differential equation approach to predict C. restuans and C. pipiens abundance in relation to several ecological predictors. We then made a predictive risk surface of abundance for each species at locations that were not sampled. Explanatory variables in the models included ecological variables previously described to be important predictors of the abundance of these mosquito species. Developed habitat, temperature, and precipitation were important predictor variables for the abundance of C. restuans, whereas developed habitat, snow water equivalent, and normalized difference water index were important predictor variables for the abundance of C. pipiens. The abundance of C. restuans had a negative relationship with developed habitat in contrast to C. pipiens abundance, which had a positive relationship with developed habitat. Julian date was modeled as a temporal trend for both species and showed C. restuans to be more abundant from late April through late June and C. pipiens to be more abundant from July through September. A seasonal crossover was observed between these two species on Julian day 185, 4 July. We observed different spatial patterns of abundance in the predictive risk maps of each of the species. Our results indicate that modeling the abundance of these species spatially and separately in regions where these two mosquito vectors coexist can help gain further insight into understanding the epidemiology of WNV in human and susceptible animal populations.

Can Pollution Regulations Enable Key Industries to Reduce CO2 Emissions?—Empirical Evidence from China, Based on Green Innovative Technology Patents and Energy Efficiency Perspectives

Under the influence of the dual policies of sustainable economic development and the national dual-carbon target, the establishment of an environmental protection department for the treatment of heavily polluting industries is imminent, and the country has launched pollution control policies and regulations to restrict the emission rights of heavily polluting industries. Therefore, this paper focuses on whether the restriction of emission rights in key industries has reduced carbon emissions. To achieve this, this paper uses panel data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2019 and adopts a two-way fixed-effects DID model to systematically analyze the impact of the key pollution industry governance policies launched by the Ministry of Environmental Protection on CO2 emissions in 2017. And further analyze the role of variables such as green technology innovation patents and energy efficiency using this model, while parallel trend tests and placebo tests, and related policies are used to ensure the robustness of the regression results. This paper reveals that: (1) The heavy pollution industry governance policy implemented in 2017 can effectively reduce CO2 emissions in the cities of the treated group, and the effect is more significant in the year of policy implementation; (2) Green utility patents and energy-use efficiency are the effective mediating mechanisms to reduce CO2 emissions; (3) Over time, the effect of heavy pollution industry governance policy on CO2 emissions gradually decreases; (4) The reliability of the baseline regression results of this paper is proved by the use of parallel trend tests, placebo tests, and tests excluding the influence factors such as relevant policies in the same period. Therefore, the key polluting industries treatment policy launched by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2017 under the recent dual-carbon policy development goals formulated by China, can effectively reduce carbon emissions; however, in the future economic development process, the government should give more consideration to the continuity of the policy impact and its coherence on economic development when implementing the policy.

Assessment of environmental pollution by lead and its impact on the child's body (using the example of the Callao region in Peru)

In the presented work, based on the existing information in abstract sources, as well as freely available statistical material collected by the Department of Ecology, Environmental Protection and Occupational Health Monitoring of the Callao region in Peru, the actual problem of lead pollution on a global scale is outlined, and ways to solve it are shown on the example of Peru, a country that is one of the leaders extraction of this metal. The analysis of the degree of pollution and the impact of lead on the environment, the assessment of the levels of lead in the blood of children living in the Callao district and the associated negative impact of lead pollution on the child's body was carried out. The article shows that in children, the earliest manifestations of lead exposure occur even at a blood level of only 10.0 micrograms/dl, while in Callao, lead levels in children's bodies are higher than this value. Levels from 50 to 60 mg/dl of lead are recorded here, while the maximum value in children under the age of 12 according to the World Health Organization (WHO) should not exceed 10 mg/dl. It is shown that a high proportion of children with elevated levels of lead in the blood is associated with the presence of industrial centers specializing in the melting of metals and the disposal of lead. The direction of winds, mainly from south to north and from southwest to northeast, could explain the higher proportion of children with elevated lead levels among residents of areas located in the north and northeast. As a result of data analysis, it was revealed that the control value less than 10 micrograms/dl, used as a threshold, is insufficient to preserve the health of the population. In addition, the article discusses possible ways to reduce pollution: through the implementation of programs for monitoring and assessing the environmental quality of the environment by companies engaged in the extraction of lead minerals. It is also necessary to comply with national environmental quality standards for lead content. Guidelines for various types of economic activities leading to the reduction of environmental pollution are proposed.

The Road to Blair Mountain: Saving a Mine Wars Battlefield from King Coal

The Road to Blair Mountain: Saving a Mine Wars Battlefield from King Coal

How to fully implement legal principles in China's EIA review and approval

This article explores the problems arising out of the EIA review and approval by examining 63 administrative judicial decisions. Each of the 63 administrative judicial decisions have been analyzed in this paper to determine the causes of actions, what the specific claims made by plaintiff and to summarize the features of the relevant cases. The results indicate that, problems arising in the procedure of EIA examination and approval by Chinese local administrative organs mainly consist of insufficient information disclosure, infringement of the public's right to know, violation of public participation provisions, unlawful revocation of EIA permission, delay in review and approval, and failure to perform the examination duties, all of which can be further categorized into following types, that is, deficiency in the EIA information openness and deficiency in procedural justice and legitimacy in respect of the EIA review and approval procedure, which show that the legal principles stipulated in the Administrative Licensing Law of People's Republic of China are ignored in respect of EIA approval. In order to solve these problems, this paper is of the opinion that the Chinese local environmental protection departments should not only abide by the Environmental Impact Assessment Law of the People's Republic of China, but also strictly follow the legal principles stipulated in the Administrative Licensing Law of People's Republic of China, such as the principle of lawfulness of administration doctrine, openness, procedural fairness, reliance protection, supervision, etc., so as to ensure that China's EIA permits are carried out along the track of legalization.

Identifying a suitable model for predicting hourly pollutant concentrations by using low-cost microstation data and machine learning

Accurately predicting the concentration of PM2.5 (fine particles with a diameter of 2.5 μm or less) is essential for health risk assessment and formulation of air pollution control strategies. At present, there is also a large amount of air pollution data. How to efficiently mine its hidden features to obtain the future concentration of pollutants is very important for the prevention and control of air pollution. Therefore we build a pollutant prediction model based on Lightweight Gradient Boosting Model (LightGBM) shallow machine learning and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network. Firstly, the PM2.5 pollutant concentration data of 34 air quality stations in Beijing and the data of 18 weather stations were matched in time and space to obtain an input data set. Subsequently, the input data set was cleaned and preprocessed, and the training set was obtained by methods such as input feature extraction, input factor normalization, and data outlier processing. The hourly PM2.5 concentration value prediction was achieved in accordance with experiments conducted with the hourly PM2.5 data of Beijing from January 1, 2018 to October 1, 2020. Ultimately, the optimal hourly series prediction results were obtained after model comparisons. Through the comparison of these two models, it is found that the RMSE predicted by LSTM model for each pollutant is nearly 50% lower than that of LightGBM, and is more consistent with the fitting curve between the actual observations. The exploration of the input step size of LSTM model found that the accuracy of 3-h input data was higher than that of 12-h input data. It can be used for the management and decision-making of environmental protection departments and the formulation of preventive measures for emergency pollution incidents.

Research on health risk assessment of heavy metals in soil based on multi-factor source apportionment: A case study in Guangdong Province, China

Environmental problems caused by heavy metal pollution in soil have attracted widespread attention worldwide. Identifying and quantifying the heavy metal pollution sources and risks is crucial for subsequent soil management. In this study, an integrated source-risk method for source apportionment and risk assessment based on the PMF model, the geodetector model and the health risk assessment model (HRA) was proposed and applied. Analysis of Hg, As, Pb, Cd, Cu, Ni, Cr, and Zn in 208 topsoils showed that the average contents of eight heavy metals were 1.87–5.86 times greater than corresponding background values, among which Cd and As were relatively high, which were higher than the specified soil risk screening values, high-value areas of heavy metals are mainly concentrated in the central part of the study area. The source apportionment showed that the accumulation of heavy metals was affected by five sources: atmospheric deposition (16.3 %), natural sources (33.1 %), industrial activities dominated by metal mining (15.1 %), industrial activities dominated by metal smelting (12.6 %) and traffic sources (22.9 %). The results of the health risk assessment showed that the carcinogenic risks (adult: 4.74E-05, children: 7.41E-05) of heavy metals in soil to the study population were both acceptable, the non-carcinogenic risk of adult (THI = 0.277) was within the limit, while the non-carcinogenic risk of children (THI = 1.70) was higher than the limit value. Ingestion (89.5 %–95.9 %) contributed the greatest health risk among all exposure routes. Source 3 (arsenic-related industrial activities dominated by metal mining) contributed the most to the HI and CRI of adults and children (all above 50 %), therefore, in the formulation stage of soil management strategy in this area, priority should be given to the control and management of this pollution source. These results can provide more detailed support for environmental protection departments to propose targeted soil pollution control measures.

Assessment of attributable proportion of particulate matter (PM 2.5 and PM10) to different mortalities in Lahore city, Pakistan

<p>This study was conducted to evaluate the attributable proportion and relative risks caused by inevitable exposure of humans to particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10). The health impacts of particulates in terms of attributable proportion were modulated using AirQ+ software. Input data related to particulates’ concentration, health and population were collected from the Environment Protection Department (EPD), Punjab Bureau of Statistics and Health Department of Punjab. Results showed that PM2.5 with the year average concentration of 55.9 ug/m3 contributes 24.17% attributable-proportion (AP) to all-cause mortality in adults age 30+, and 31.41% AP to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in adults age 30+. Attributable proportion to stroke mortality in adults age 25+ was 33.4% (BI-150) and 34.09% (BI-630) was in children aged 0-5 years, contributing to acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) mortality. Modulated results indicated that the attributable proportion to ischemic heart diseases (IHD) was 40.8% (BI-95.2) in adults age 25+ and PM10 with an average concentration of 105 ug/m3 contributes 31.11% AP to infant post-neonatal. There is need of proper mitigation measures for reduction of pollutants’ concentration to decrease potential health impacts of air particulates.</p>

Decentralization of Environmental Enforcement

This article examines the consequences of one organizational structure (regional decentralization) on the enforcement of environmental regulations. Using interviews conducted with the staff of and data drawn from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the results of this study suggest that the reporting structure in the Pennsylvania air quality program sometimes produces conflicting directives to the various regional offices while also making efforts to arrive at a common approach to enforcement more difficult.