Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association

Journal of the air and waste management association may consider our review paper to be published. In this review, we give important information related to the technologies, managements and strategies for handling the medical waste and control the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus, starting from proper technology to control the high number of medical waste, their pollutants and many strategies for controlling the spreading of SARS-CoV-2 virus. Moreover, this review also describes some strategies associated with control the transmission not only the SARS-CoV-2 virus but also the outbreak of new viruses near the future...

The Canadian Federal Government promulgated new and lower NO2 Ambient Air Quality Standards (CAAQS) that went into effect in 2020 with additional decreases scheduled for 2025. The new hourly and annual NO2 CAAQS are 60 and 17 ppb, respectively, and the 2025 hourly and annual CAAQS are 42 and 12 ppb, respectively. The province of Alberta has also promulgated Ambient Air Quality Objectives (AAAQO) for NO2 currently set to 159 and 24 ppb on an hourly and annual basis, respectively. The Wood Buffalo Environmental Association (WBEA) in northeastern Alberta, Canada monitors NO2 at 21 community and industrial sites throughout the Alberta Oil Sands Region (AOSR), for regulatory compliance using Thermo-Environmental (TEI) Model 42i Federal Reference Method (FRM) designated NO-NO2 -NOx analyzers...

Air pollution can have deleterious impacts on human health and the environment. Historically, air pollution studies have focused more on cities. However, it is also important to consider the impact on large suburban populations living closer to the major cities. In this study, nitrogen oxides (nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxide), sulfur dioxide, ozone, and ammonia concentrations were measured from fifteen sites in the Greater Philadelphia area, Pennsylvania, USA using Ogawa passive samplers from September 2021 to May 2022...

This paper focuses on the impact of solid barriers located upwind of a highway in reducing vehicle related concentrations that occur downwind of the roadway, compared to a highway without barriers. Measurements made in the United States Environmental Protection Agency's meteorological wind tunnel show that the mitigating impact of an upwind barrier is comparable to that of a downwind barrier. Upwind barriers lead to reductions in pollution concentrations by drawing emissions in from the highway toward the barrier...

Facing severe air pollution in its North Plain, the central government of China initiated the Joint Clean Air Action (JCAA) in 2017 to facilitate pollution mitigation efforts across the region. While quite a few studies investigated the effectiveness of this regulation, much less attention is paid to the pollution spillover effects. We empirically examine the effects, and show that 1) air quality in the east of the target cities has been improved due to positive spillover of improved air quality under the JCAA; 2) the beneficiary spillover lasts for two seasons and disappeared in autumn and winter; 3) air quality in the north, south and west directions are almost not changed; 4) wind direction and topography, two determinants of atmospheric transport, have a considerable influence over the spillover effects...

Carlsbad Caverns National Park (CAVE) is located in southeastern New Mexico and is adjacent to the Permian Basin, one of the most productive oil and natural gas (O&G) production regions in the United States. Since 2018, ozone (O3 ) at CAVE has frequently exceeded the 70 ppbv 8-hour National Ambient Air Quality Standard. We examine the influence of regional emissions on O3 formation using observations of O3 , nitrogen oxides (NOx  = NO + NO2 ), a suite of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), and peroxypropionyl nitrate (PPN)...

Carlsbad Caverns National Park experiences ground-level ozone exceeding the National Ambient Air Quality Standard. Volatile organic compounds are critical precursors to ozone formation. Measurements in the Park identify oil and gas production and development activities as the major contributors to volatile organic compounds. Emissions from the adjacent Permian Basin contributed to increases in primary species that enhanced local ozone formation. Observations of photochemically generated compounds indicate that ozone was also transported from shale formations and basins farther upwind...

Ammonia (NH3 ) emissions negatively impact air, soil, and water quality, hence human health and biodiversity. Significant emissions, including the largest sources, originate from single or multiple structures, such as livestock facilities and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The inverse dispersion method (IDM) is effective in measuring total emissions from such sources, although depositional loss between the source and point of measurement is often not accounted for. We applied IDM with a deposition correction to determine total emissions from a representative dairy housing and WWTP during several months in autumn and winter in Switzerland...

The greenhouse gas emitted due to transportation is the third greatest emitter globally, and its impact has become a threat to the environment, public health, and economic development. Waste transportation is excluded in studies of waste management despite its significant environmental impacts such as global warming and human toxicity. The objective of this study is to develop a quantification model to estimate the carbon footprint of waste transportation and environmental impact assessments in three categories applied in Tehran using IPCC guidelines...

The concentration of surface air methane (CH4 ) measured in parts per million by volume (ppmv) near the soil/atmosphere interface should, in theory, have a positive correlation with surface methane emissions fluxes, measured in grams per square meter per day (gm-2 d-1 ). Some researchers suggest that CH4 flux can be reasonably inferred from simple measurements of CH4 concentrations near the landfill surface. Ground-based and drone-based surface emissions monitoring (SEMs) were performed at several municipal solid waste landfills as tracer correlation method (TCM) testing was being used to measure total methane emissions from the same landfills...

E-waste is a valuable secondary resource containing numerous toxic substances and high-value components. If improperly handled, it will cause severe environmental pollution. Therefore, efficient recycling of this material can reduce environmental pollution. However, after crushing, fine crushing, and magnetic separation, a substantial quantity of fragmented non-magnetic materials with high value, such as copper and aluminum, remain. Refrigerators, as typical e-waste, have a similar composition to fragmented non-magnetic materials...

This study presents a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based biofiltration model to investigate the airflow distribution and the impact of bed flow unevenness (BFU) on the removal of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in biofilters. The biofiltration model consists of a gas flow sub-model and a VOCs removal sub-model, which were validated by pilot-scale experiments. The model was used to examine the quantitative relationship among reactor dimensions, including the width to height ratio of the filter bed and empty bed residence time (EBRT), BFU, and performance for VOCs biofilters...

Concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in air can be reduced in electrostatic separators where VOCs are ionized using ion-molecule reactions, extracted using electric fields, and eliminated in a waste flow. Embodiments for such separator technology have been explored in only a few studies, despite the possible advantage of purification without adsorbent filters. In one design, based on ionization of VOCs in positive polarity with hydrated protons as reactant ions, efficiencies for removal were measured as 30 to 40% ...

Cement solidification is essential to reduce heavy metal leaching from industrial sludge and make it recyclable. This paper studied the effect of aggregate grading optimized by sludge containing heavy metal of different particle sizes on the performance of baking-free sludge bricks, which was mixed with industrial sludge cured by both micro-silica fume and cement. First, the gradation of fine natural aggregates was adjusted according to the Fuller curve. Fine aggregates in baking-free bricks were replaced by artificially processed sludge with particle sizes of 0...

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The Interagency Monitoring of PROtected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) network has collected airborne particulate matter (PM) samples at locations throughout the United States since 1988 and provided chemical speciation measurements on the samples using several techniques including X-ray fluorescence (XRF). New XRF instruments for measuring PM elemental content of IMPROVE samples were introduced in 2011. To evaluate the performance of these new instruments relative to the old instruments, archived sample from three IMPROVE monitoring sites were retrieved and analyzed on the new instruments...

Thermal treatment is a mainstream technique to separate plastic components from waste crystalline silicon (c-Si) photovoltaic (PV) modules. In this study, the thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was conducted for a better understanding of the characteristics of plastic components mainly poly(ethylene-co-vinyl) acetate (EVA) binder and polyfluoroethylene composite membrane (TPT) backsheet in waste c-Si PV panels through thermal treatment at four different heating rates (5-20°C·min-1 ) under nitrogen and air conditions, respectively...

Fugitive dust emissions play an important role in urban air quality. Much research on fugitive dust's effects has focused on human health and societal impacts, with limited work investigating effects on other species. The endangered Apodemia mormo langei butterfly is endemic to the Antioch Dunes, a small area on the south bank of the San Joaquin River in northern California, largely protected as a National Wildlife Refuge. Between the two protected portions of the dunes is a gypsum processing facility. Deposition of gypsum dust may adversely affect endangered insects, especially in their vulnerable larval life stage...

Huge quantities of agricultural waste are available annually in Saudi Arabia, which are not well exploited, leading to large environmental pollution and health problems. The use of different proportions of tomato waste compost (TWC) mixed with commercial peat-moss as a natural, economical, cheap and environmentally friendly fertilizer for fertilizing vegetables is very important, therefore, this study is concerned with investigating and evaluating the dry matter content (DM) and the accumulated heavy metal contents (HMs) in the root and leaf seedlings tissues of cucumber and summer squash plants as a result of using this fertilizer...

To explore the characteristic of competitive adsorption of formaldehyde (HCHO) and benzene(C6 H6 ) on activated carbon, the slit models of activated carbon with different pore sizes of 1nm, 2nm and 4nm were constructed by using the Visualizer module of Materials Studio molecular simulation software. The adsorption of single-component C6 H6 and HCHO at three different temperatures of 288.15K,293.15K and 323.15K were conducted by the method of grand canonical Monte Carlo. Experiments were carried out to verify the accuracy of simulation results...