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Atmosphere
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Air Pollution and Human Exposures in Israel
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Air Pollution and Human Exposures in Israel

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Air Quality and Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 July 2020) | Viewed by 27290

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Ilan Levy

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Air Quality and Climate Change Division, Israel Ministry of Environmental Protection, Israel
Interests: Air pollution; Meteorology; Human exposure; Air quality models
Dr. Eran Tas

E-Mail Website
Co-Guest Editor
Department of Soil and Water Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel
Interests: atmospheric chemistry; air pollution; cloud microphysics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to contribute to a Special Issue of Atmosphere dedicated to research in air pollution and human exposure in Israel. Early studies on air pollution in Israel started during the 1970s and actively continue in the present, covering a wide variety of topics like air pollution measurements, photochemistry, meteorology, and modeling. Although both emissions and ambient levels of air pollution have been declining in the last couple of decades, air pollution continues to be a major environmental factor affecting human health in Israel. Critical levels of air pollution concentrations have serious consequences on human health in terms of premature deaths and morbidity, on human society through healthcare costs, and the economy in general by reducing agricultural productivity, for example.

This Special Issue aims to collect original research and review articles focused on air pollution and human exposure in Israel. Manuscripts may present original research or review previous work and summarize the current state of the science, thereby providing context to the current research and the direction in which the field is moving.

Some topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- Spatial and temporal variability in ambient air pollution levels
- Chemistry of air pollution
- Air pollutants composition
- Economic costs of air pollution
- Health effects of air pollution
- Source apportionment of air pollutants and, in particular, the relative contribution of biogenic sources of air pollutants and particulate matter
- Air quality modeling
- Air pollution meteorology at the synoptic, meso or local scales
- Air pollution and cloud microphysics

Dr. Ilan Levy
Dr. Eran Tas
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Air pollution
  • Exposure models
  • Spatial analysis
  • Particulate matter
  • Source apportionment
  • Air pollution emission
  • Air pollution meteorology
  • Atmospheric chemistry
  • Air pollution economics
  • Health effects of air pollution

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

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54 pages, 3776 KiB  
Article
Marine Air Pollution in Israel: Extent, Proposed Mitigation Targets, Benefits and Feasibility
by Eyal Razy-Yanuv, Yogev Barak, Oran Noam and Daniel Madar
Atmosphere 2022, 13(2), 241; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13020241 - 31 Jan 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 5230
Abstract
Marine air pollution is a major contributor to seaports and coastal air pollution, and Israel has yet to seriously confront this issue. This study aimed to update previous marine air pollution estimations in Israel’s two major ports: Haifa and Ashdod. The objectives were [...] Read more.
Marine air pollution is a major contributor to seaports and coastal air pollution, and Israel has yet to seriously confront this issue. This study aimed to update previous marine air pollution estimations in Israel’s two major ports: Haifa and Ashdod. The objectives were to examine technical and regulatory measures to address the problem, to propose mitigation targets and to estimate their potential benefits. Based on a model of emission-calculations that relies on an updated ship-inventory data as well as real-time ships’ location and movement tools, the combined marine NOx, SOx and PM2.5 annual emissions in these ports were found to be 18,415, 15,128 and 1453 tons, respectively. These values are considerably higher than previous estimates, are comparable to the constant pollution emitted at ground level from a 1000-MW coal powered city power plant and are 3–20 times higher than the industrial and land transportation sectors in these cities. Relatively high nickel concentration in PM was found in Israel only relatively adjacent to the Haifa and Ashdod ports. Since high nickel concentration in PM is today mainly associated with marine air pollution, this finding supports the hypothesis that marine air pollution worsens the air quality in these cities. SOx and PM2.5 emissions can be reduced by 78% and 27%, respectively, if Israel enforces the revised International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) Annex VI regulations in its territorial waters. While the latter step can achieve external benefits of NIS 518.4 million/year (EUR 132 million/year), additional mitigation actions and local regulations are suggested, focusing on NOx emissions but also on other pollutant criteria. Such actions can achieve further benefits of NIS 274.3 million/year (EUR 70 million/year). Achieving the suggested targets is challenging yet attainable, and their potential benefits will probably outweigh their costs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Air Pollution and Human Exposures in Israel)
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20 pages, 1383 KiB  
Article
An Urban Lagrangian Stochastic Dispersion Model for Simulating Traffic Particulate-Matter Concentration Fields
by Eyal Fattal, Hadas David-Saroussi, Ziv Klausner and Omri Buchman
Atmosphere 2021, 12(5), 580; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12050580 - 30 Apr 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2484
Abstract
The accumulated particulate matter concentration at a given vertical column due to traffic sources in urban area has many important consequences. This task, however, imposes a major challenge, since the problem of realistic pollutant dispersion in an urban environment is a very demanding [...] Read more.
The accumulated particulate matter concentration at a given vertical column due to traffic sources in urban area has many important consequences. This task, however, imposes a major challenge, since the problem of realistic pollutant dispersion in an urban environment is a very demanding task, both theoretically and computationally. This is mainly due to the highly inhomogeneous three dimensional turbulent flow regime in the urban canopy roughness sublayer, which is far from “local equilibrium” between shear production and dissipation. We present here a mass-consistent urban Lagrangian stochastic model for pollutants dispersion, where the flow field is modeled using a hybrid approach by which we model the surface layer based on the typical turbulent scales, both of the canopy and in the surface layer inertial sub-layer. In particular it relies on representing the canopy aerodynamically as a porous medium by spatial averaging the equations of motion, with the assumption that the canopy is laterally uniform on a scale much larger than the buildings but smaller than the urban block/neighbourhood, i.e., at the sub-urban-block scale. Choosing the spatial representative averaging volume allows the averaged variables to reflect the characteristic vertical heterogeneity of the canopy but to smooth out smaller scale spatial fluctuations caused as air flows in between the buildings. This modeling approach serves as the base for a realistic and efficient methodology for the calculation of the accumulated concentration from multiple traffic sources for any vertical column in the urban area. The existence of multiple traffic sources impose further difficulty since the computational effort required is very demanding for practical uses. Therefore, footprint analysis screening was introduced to identify the relevant part of the urban area which contributes to the chosen column. All the traffic sources in this footprint area where merged into several areal sources, further used for the evaluation of the concentration profile. This methodology was implemented for four cases in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area based on several selected summer climatological scenarios. We present different typical behaviors, demonstrating combination of source structure, urban morphology, flow characteristics, and the resultant dispersion pattern in each case. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Air Pollution and Human Exposures in Israel)
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23 pages, 7500 KiB  
Article
Associations between Exposure to Industrial Air Pollution and Prevalence of Asthma and Atopic Diseases in Haifa Bay Area
by Raanan Raz, Yuval, Ruth Lev Bar-Or, Jeremy D. Kark, Ronit Sinnreich, David M. Broday, Ruthie Harari-Kremer, Lea Bentur, Alex Gileles-Hillel, Lital Keinan-Boker, Andrey Lyubarsky, Dorit Tsur, Arnon Afek, Noam Levin, Estela Derazne and Gilad Twig
Atmosphere 2021, 12(4), 516; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12040516 - 19 Apr 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3490
Abstract
Haifa Bay Area (HBA) contains Israel’s principal industrial area, and there are substantial public concerns about health effects from its emissions. We aimed to examine associations between exposure to air pollution from HBA industrial area with prevalent asthma and other atopic diseases at [...] Read more.
Haifa Bay Area (HBA) contains Israel’s principal industrial area, and there are substantial public concerns about health effects from its emissions. We aimed to examine associations between exposure to air pollution from HBA industrial area with prevalent asthma and other atopic diseases at age 17. This is a cross-sectional study. The study population included all adolescents born in Israel and whose medical status was evaluated for mandatory military recruitment by the Israeli medical corps during 1967–2017. We analyzed prevalent asthma, allergic rhinitis, atopic dermatitis, and rhinoconjunctivitis. We estimated exposure to industrial air pollution by a kriging interpolation of historical SO2 observations and adjusted the associations to the year of birth, SES, school orientation, and traffic pollution. The study population included n = 2,523,745 adolescents, among which 5.9% had prevalent asthma and 4.6% had allergic rhinitis. Residency in HBA was associated with a higher adjusted risk of asthma, compared with non-HBA residency. Still, this association was limited to the three lowest exposure categories, while the highest exposure group had the lowest adjusted risk. Sensitivity analyses and other atopic diseases presented similar results. These results do not provide support for causal relationships between HBA industry-related emissions and prevalent atopic diseases. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Air Pollution and Human Exposures in Israel)
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19 pages, 7766 KiB  
Article
The Micrometeorology of the Haifa Bay Area and Mount Carmel during the Summer
by Ziv Klausner, Mattya Ben-Efraim, Yehuda Arav, Eran Tas and Eyal Fattal
Atmosphere 2021, 12(3), 354; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12030354 - 8 Mar 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2291
Abstract
The Haifa bay area (HBA), which includes Mount Carmel and the Zevulun valley is the third largest metropolitan area in Israel. It is also a centre of heavy industry and an important transportation hub which serve as sources of local anthropogenic pollution. Such [...] Read more.
The Haifa bay area (HBA), which includes Mount Carmel and the Zevulun valley is the third largest metropolitan area in Israel. It is also a centre of heavy industry and an important transportation hub which serve as sources of local anthropogenic pollution. Such sources are associated with adverse health effects. In order to estimate the possible exposure of the inhabitants in such heterogeneous orographic area, a detailed atmospheric transport and dispersion modelling study is required, which in turn must take into account the local micrometeorology. The aim of this study is to conduct a spatio-temporal analysis of the flow field in the HBA in order to identify the common patterns of the average wind and characterize the statistical parameters of turbulence in this area, essential for detailed pollutants dispersion modelling. This study analyses data collected during four months of summer in a network of 16 weather stations which extend across Mount Carmel and the Zevulun valley. It was found that, during the evening and night time on Mount Carmel, different flow patterns may develop on each side, separated by the watershed line. When such conditions do not develop, as well as during the daytime, the wind field, both on Mount Carmel and the Zevulun valley is approximately homogenous. The analysis of the Monin–Obukhov similarity theory functions for the velocity standard deviations show a distinct difference between Mount Carmel and the Zevulun valley, as well as between strong and weak winds. This difference can be clearly seen also in the diurnal hourly distribution of atmospheric stabilities which exhibit higher proportions of unstable conditions in the Zevulun valley during day time and higher proportion of stable stratifications at the Mount Carmel during night-time. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Air Pollution and Human Exposures in Israel)
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12 pages, 3051 KiB  
Article
Predictors of the Indoor-to-Outdoor Ratio of Particle Number Concentrations in Israel
by Siyu Zhang, Yuval, David M. Broday and Raanan Raz
Atmosphere 2020, 11(10), 1074; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11101074 - 9 Oct 2020
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2660
Abstract
Exposure to airborne particles is a risk factor of many short- and long-term health effects. Most epidemiological studies include estimates of exposure to ambient particles, however, people living in developed countries spend most of their time indoors. This work presents an analysis of [...] Read more.
Exposure to airborne particles is a risk factor of many short- and long-term health effects. Most epidemiological studies include estimates of exposure to ambient particles, however, people living in developed countries spend most of their time indoors. This work presents an analysis of a field campaign of simultaneous measurements of indoor-to-outdoor particle number concentrations (PNCs) in Israel. Fine and coarse PNCs were continuously measured using Dylos DC1700 devices from October 2016 to October 2017. The median outdoor PNC was always higher than the indoor PNC in all the five sampling locations. Outdoor fine PNCs peak during the night and experience a trough in the afternoon. The median of the fine indoor-to-outdoor PNC ratio (IOR) was 0.83, with an inter quartile range (IQR) of 0.59. The median of the coarse IOR was 0.70, with an IQR of 0.77. Lower IORs were experienced at night than during the day, with a daily peak (IOR > 1) around noon. Information about the IOR in different regions and seasons may help epidemiologists and policy makers understand the true health effects of particulate air pollution, and correct their exposure estimations such that they account for indoor exposure as well. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Air Pollution and Human Exposures in Israel)
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17 pages, 395 KiB  
Article
Assessment of Household and Outdoor Air Pollution Exposure Link to Urinary Metals Content in Pregnant Women
by Isabella Karakis, Nofar Shemesh, Ofir Tirosh, Daniella Landau, Roni Gat, Maayan Yitshak-Sade, Itai Kloog, Batia Sarov and Lena Novack
Atmosphere 2020, 11(6), 638; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11060638 - 16 Jun 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2632
Abstract
We aimed to estimate the association of urinary metal content with the exposure to hazardous household factors and ambient air pollution in pregnant women. We analyzed urine samples of 143 women enrolled at delivery and assessed household exposure by questionnaire. Air pollution estimates [...] Read more.
We aimed to estimate the association of urinary metal content with the exposure to hazardous household factors and ambient air pollution in pregnant women. We analyzed urine samples of 143 women enrolled at delivery and assessed household exposure by questionnaire. Air pollution estimates were based on monitoring stations and satellite-based models. Complaints about noise, rubbish, and sewage in the neighborhood were associated with higher uranium concentrations (prevalence ratio (PR) = 1.42, 1.46, and 1.18, respectively). Complaints about noise were more frequent in women with higher cobalt, nickel, molybdenum, cadmium, and vanadium urine concentrations (PRs = 2.42–9.43), and complaints about smell in women with higher cobalt and strontium (PRs = 2.55–6.27). Exposure to nitrogen oxides was associated with higher concentrations of nickel, aluminum, lead, and chromium in urine (PRs = 1.80–5.85). Women exposed to elevated levels of particulate matter were more likely to have higher concentrations of cobalt, nickel, thallium, lead, iron, strontium, barium, silver, and chromium (PRs = 1.97–13.64). Exposure to high levels of sulfur dioxide was positively associated with cobalt and nickel (PR = 1.98 and 1.88, respectively). The current analysis suggests the possibility of a related simultaneous exposure to multiple pollutants. Further studies are warranted to corroborate the findings and reveal the multiple exposure effect on human health. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Air Pollution and Human Exposures in Israel)
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Review

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8 pages, 195 KiB  
Review
Air Pollution Policy in Israel
by Maya Negev
Atmosphere 2020, 11(10), 1065; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11101065 - 8 Oct 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 7476
Abstract
Since its establishment in 1948, the State of Israel has been oriented towards economic development and industrialization, with a transportation sector increasingly focused on private cars. In 1961, initial awareness of environmental risks led to the adoption of the Abatement of Nuisances Law, [...] Read more.
Since its establishment in 1948, the State of Israel has been oriented towards economic development and industrialization, with a transportation sector increasingly focused on private cars. In 1961, initial awareness of environmental risks led to the adoption of the Abatement of Nuisances Law, which served as the platform for air pollution policy for several decades, even as population growth and growth of the industrial sector, including fossil fuel power plants, led to a continuous increase in air pollution. In the early 2000s, the environmental movement in Israel criticized local air pollution policy as being out of date and started to promote a new Clean Air Law. The law, which was adopted in 2008 and came into force in 2011, was a watershed in air pollution policy in Israel. It includes ambient air quality values for 28 contaminants, emission permits for the industrial sector based on best available techniques (BAT), an enforcement system, and a unified and transparent monitoring system. This paper reviews the history of air pollution policy in Israel from 1948, through the 1961 and 2008 landmark legislations and their strengths and weaknesses, to the present. The paper ends with recommendations for future air pollution policy in Israel. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Air Pollution and Human Exposures in Israel)
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