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Journals
Atmosphere
Special Issues
Effects of Outdoor Pollutants on Human Health
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Effects of Outdoor Pollutants on Human Health

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2022) | Viewed by 3416

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Sarkawt Hama

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
2. Department of Chemistry, School of Science, University of Sulaimani, Sulaimani, Iraq
Interests: aerosols; chemical composition of particulate matter; ultrafine particles (UFPs); laboratory studies; field measurements; sources and sinks for atmospheric oxidants; sources and transformations of air pollutants in urban areas, and gaseous pollutants
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Hang Yi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Wright State University, Dayton, OH 45354, USA
Interests: Computational and experimental fluid dynamics; biofluidic and biomechanics; particle image velocimetry; multiphase flow modeling; fluid–solid interaction modeling; discrete phase models; non-Newtonian fluid modeling; fire models; machine learning and deep learning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Dilinuer Talifu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Xinjiang University, 666-Shengli Road, Tian Shan Area, Wulumuqi 830046, China
Interests: source analysis; health risk assessment; environmental quality impact assessment; conversion mechanism of atmospheric pollutants

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Most studies focus on the transport and deposition behaviors of indoor toxicants and their potential effects on human health, while the attention on outdoor contaminants is also needed. Exposure to outdoor air pollutants (i.e., industrial emissions, the toxic particles and gases from wildland fires, and accidental leaks) can have a significant effect on local air quality and then human health, including asthma exacerbation and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, and increased risk of arrhythmia, ischemia, and cardiac failure. Thus, an in-depth understanding of the theoretical fundamentals and state-of-art detection and control technologies in the process of source emission, dispersion, and deposition can help researchers/engineers to better estimate the risks to human health qualitatively and quantitatively. In recognition of this emphasis shift, the open-access journal Atmosphere is hosting a Special Issue to showcase the most recent findings related to the transport and deposition behaviors of outdoor pollutants and its effects on human health. Original results from field and controlled investigations, subjective surveys, in situ, in vivo, in vitro, and in silico approaches, machine learning and bigdata, and review papers related to qualitatively and/or quantitatively evaluate the effects of outdoor contaminants (i.e., aerosols, particles, gases) on human health are all welcome contributions.

Dr. Sarkawt Hama
Dr. Hang Yi
Dr. Dilinuer Talifu
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
  • human health
  • industrial emission
  • wildland fire products
  • contaminant dispersion prediction
  • toxic aerosols and particles
  • source estimation
  • human respiratory deposition
  • machine learning and big data

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 2777 KiB  
Article
Temporal Distribution and Source Apportionment of Composition of Ambient PM2.5 in Urumqi, North-West China
by Kejun Li, Dilinuer Talifu, Bo Gao, Xiaoxiao Zhang, Wei Wang, Abulikemu Abulizi, Xinming Wang, Xiang Ding, Huibin Liu and Yuanyu Zhang
Atmosphere 2022, 13(5), 781; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13050781 - 12 May 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1542
Abstract
In order to identify the pollution characteristics and sources of PM2.5 in Urumqi, fine particulate matter samples were collected from September 2017 to August 2018, and the water-soluble ions (WSIs), organic carbon (OC), elemental carbon (EC), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and metal [...] Read more.
In order to identify the pollution characteristics and sources of PM2.5 in Urumqi, fine particulate matter samples were collected from September 2017 to August 2018, and the water-soluble ions (WSIs), organic carbon (OC), elemental carbon (EC), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and metal elements were analyzed. The results indicate that the annual mass concentration of PM2.5 in Urumqi was 158.85 ± 15.11 μg/m3, with the highest seasonal average in autumn (180.49 ± 87.22 μg/m3) and the lowest in summer (148.41 ± 52.60 μg/m3). SO42− (13.58 ± 16.4 μg/m3), NO3− (13.46 ± 17.5 μg/m3), and NH4+ (10.88 ± 12.2 μg/m3) were the most abundant WSIs, and the secondary inorganic ions (SNA = SO42− + NO3− + NH4+) accounted for 87.23% of the WSIs. The NO3−/SO42− ratio indicates that the contribution of stationary sources was dominant. The annual concentrations of OC and EC were 12.00 ± 4.4 µg/m3 and 5.00 ± 3.5 µg/m3, respectively, the OC/EC ratios in winter (2.55 ± 0.7), spring (3.43 ± 1.3), and summer (3.22 ± 1.1) were greater than 2, and there was the formation of secondary organic carbon (SOC). The correlation between OC and EC in spring in Urumqi (R2 = 0.53) was low. In the PM2.5, Al and Fe were the most abundant elements. The highest mass concentration season occurred in autumn, with mass concentrations of 15.11 ± 10.1 µg/m3 and 8.33 ± 6.9 µg/m3, respectively. The enrichment factor (EF) shows that most of the metal elements come from natural sources, and the Cd element mainly comes from anthropogenic sources. PAHs with a middle molecular weight were the main ones, and the annual average annual mass concentration of the PAHs was 451.35 ng/m3. The positive matrix factor model (PMF) source analysis shows that there are five main sources of PM2.5 in Urumqi, including crustal minerals, biomass combustion, coal combustion, vehicular transport, and secondary aerosols. The distribution percentages of these different sources were 19.2%, 10.2%, 12.1%, 8.2%, and 50.3%, respectively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Outdoor Pollutants on Human Health)
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19 pages, 4835 KiB  
Article
Comparison and Improvement of Bioinspired Mobile Algorithms to Trace the Emission Source Based on the Simulation Scenarios
by Denglong Ma, Guofang Xie, Weigao Mao, Jianmin Gao, Hang Yi and Dangchao Li
Atmosphere 2022, 13(5), 661; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13050661 - 21 Apr 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1382
Abstract
Hazardous gas emissions may have serious consequences for surrounding residents and the environment. Bioinspired mobile robots equipped with gas sensors have the potential to become a solution for precisely tracking and locating emission sources. In this study, the performance, efficiency, and accuracy of [...] Read more.
Hazardous gas emissions may have serious consequences for surrounding residents and the environment. Bioinspired mobile robots equipped with gas sensors have the potential to become a solution for precisely tracking and locating emission sources. In this study, the performance, efficiency, and accuracy of various bionic algorithms with bioinspired mobile sensors, i.e., silkworm, E. coli, ZigZag, and step-up algorithms, were compared using field simulations to track emission sources in the atmosphere. In the tracing process, the determination criteria of maximum concentration, minimum concentration (i.e., 0), and concentration gradient were discussed quantitatively. The simulation results showed that the silkworm algorithm has the best performance in locating the emission source, while the E. coli algorithm has the highest tracking efficiency. Therefore, a single source-determination criterion may be insufficient, since tracking accuracy and efficiency can vary with different simulation algorithms. To address these concerns, a new tracking strategy driven by the inverse motion and interface gradient (RMIG) was proposed, based on the behaviors of female mosquitoes seeking hosts by tracking CO2 plumes, to improve tracking efficiency. It was found that the locating efficiency driven by RMIG is greatly improved and higher than that of the E. coli algorithm in the tested cases, with 40% to 100% explicitly enhanced. Finally, the optimal correlated matching of concentration distribution (OCMCD) method was used to locate the source with a mobile sensor. Compared with traditional and common source-determination criteria, the RMIG-OCMCD method can significantly improve location accuracy. The proposed RMIG-OCMCD method could be a practical choice for tracking emission sources in the atmosphere if an appropriate search strategy is designed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Outdoor Pollutants on Human Health)
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