KUALA LUMPUR: Air quality throughout the country was reported generally good as no areas recorded unhealthy readings on the Air Pollution Index (API) today.
According to the Department of Environment (DOE) air quality at 16 locations showed good air quality while 36 recorded moderate air quality at 11am.
The statement also said air quality in several areas in the north and West Coast of the Peninsula today improved from yesterday after registering lower API readings.
However, air quality is still unstable with the prolonged hot weather in the region causing fires and a spike in hotspots in Sumatra, Indonesia.
As of yesterday, the number of hotspots in Sumatra was still high at 341 compared with 581 the day before.
Daily air quality index of some of the world's major cities on July 2, using data from AirNow, CITEAIR, and the American Embassy in Beijing.
City
Average 29/06/2012
Average 02/07/2012
London
Madrid
Paris
Brussels
Berlin
Prague
Zurich
Beijing
NA
NA
Beijing US embassy stats
NA
Shanghai
Hong Kong
Brunei
Seoul
NA
New York
San Francisco
Mexico City
Montreal
NA
NA
Toronto
NA
NA
New Delhi
Sydney
The Air Quality Index (AQI) or Air Pollution Index (API) measures the parts of pollutant in a specified volume of air. The lower the AQI the fewer particles of pollution are in the air. For a more detailed explanation see http://www.airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=aqibasics.aqi.
All results are color-coded following the American AQI standard shown below. For all countries outside of Europe, the US and Canada, that region's definition of AQI terms has been accepted.
Legend
Air Quality
Good
Moderate
Unhealthy for sensitive groups
Unhealthy
Very Unhealthy
Hazardous
Data: Data relating to Europe, the US and Canada is taken from CITEAIR -- Common Information to European Air (http://www.airnow.gov / http://www.airqualitynow.eu); data concerning China is taken from both official Chinese government sources and the US Embassy's automated air index Twitter account. For all countries the data displayed falls within either that country's definition of the level of air quality or the international AQI index. Data for all European, US and Canadian cities refers to background, not roadside, levels of air quality.
Data for Beijing is taken from an average reading given across six districts by the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center.
All data was collected at 08:45 am GMT on July 02.
Daily air quality index of some of the world's major cities on June 29, using data from AirNow, CITEAIR, and the American Embassy in Beijing.
City
Average 28/06/2012
Average 29/06/2012
London
Madrid
Paris
Brussels
Berlin
Prague
Zurich
Beijing
NA
Beijing US embassy stats
Shanghai
Hong Kong
Brunei
Seoul
NA
New York
San Francisco
Mexico City
Montreal
NA
Toronto
NA
New Delhi
Sydney
The Air Quality Index (AQI) or Air Pollution Index (API) measures the parts of pollutant in a specified volume of air. The lower the AQI the fewer particles of pollution are in the air. For a more detailed explanation see http://www.airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=aqibasics.aqi.
All results are color-coded following the American AQI standard shown below. For all countries outside of Europe, the US and Canada, that region's definition of AQI terms has been accepted.
Legend
Air Quality
Good
Moderate
Unhealthy for sensitive groups
Unhealthy
Very Unhealthy
Hazardous
Data: Data relating to Europe, the US and Canada is taken from CITEAIR -- Common Information to European Air (http://www.airnow.gov / http://www.airqualitynow.eu); data concerning China is taken from both official Chinese government sources and the US Embassy's automated air index Twitter account. For all countries the data displayed falls within either that country's definition of the level of air quality or the international AQI index. Data for all European, US and Canadian cities refers to background, not roadside, levels of air quality.
Data for Beijing is taken from an average reading given across six districts by the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center.
All data was collected at 08:45 am GMT on June 29.
It was a nice day, but I smelled something fishy outside. I went out and I was surprised to see this, haze is even invading my neighbourhood, oh-mee-oh-my!
KUALA LUMPUR (June 17, 2012): Heavy rainfall in most parts of the Klang Valley this morning has lowered Air Pollutant Index (API) readings at four locations in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur.
An API reading of 127 was recorded in Port Klang at 11am today, compared with 142 at the same time yesterday while lower readings were also recorded in Shah Alam (116), Kuala Selangor (110) and Petaling Jaya (102).
API readings at 11am yesterday in Shah Alam was 130, Kuala Selangor (101) and Petaling Jaya (131). According to a statement from the Department of Environment (DOE) today, 24-hour surveillance on 10 areas showed good API levels, 37 areas with moderate readings while no areas were deemed unhealthy.
Poor levels of air quality was reportedly caused by cross-border haze being blown in from Sumatra, Indonesia, it added.
A satellite image issued by the Asean Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC) showed 80 hotspots located in Sumatra compared with nine on Friday.
The satellite image also showed that movement of haze carried by southwesterly winds at hotspots in Riau, central Sumatra will move to the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia covering the Klang Valley.
The department stated they have mobilised the National Haze Action Plan and activated the Open Burning Prevention Action Plan in all states to monitor air quality nationwide.
The public have also been reminded that prohibition of open burning in Selangor, the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya is still enforced. – Bernama
PETALING JAYA: Authorities are stepping up vigilance nationwide against the haze that is expected to worsen in the next few days.
The Department of Environment (DOE) has imposed a blanket ban on open burning in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya while the Education Ministry is monitoring the situation. The Malaysian Medical Association is also advising the public on how to deal with the haze.
The ministry opened an operations room in Putrajaya yesterday to monitor the haze and keep schools informed on whether to stay open.
He added that the operations room would liaise with district education offices to keep them informed on how bad the haze is at the different locales.
Breathe easy: Unipharm Pharmacy Subang Jaya assistant Noor Azlina Baharudin giving out face masks to Amir Zakee Adnal and his family after several places in the Klang Valley recorded unhealty API levels yesterday.
The 2005 circular issued to school heads when Malaysia was hit with one of the worst incidents of haze remains in force.
Schools will be closed once the Air Pollutant Index (API) in their area reaches 400 while all sporting and outdoor activities will be cancelled once the API hits the “hazardous” level of 300.
Abd Ghafar said: “We want the principals to monitor the situation in their schools and to contact the district education office for the next course of action.”
As at 5pm yesterday, the air quality had deteriorated in Selangor with seven areas recording an unhealthy reading of more than 100 on the API up from Friday's four areas.
It was reported that the haze originated from peat and forest fires in the Riau district of central Sumatra. Yesterday morning, a Nasa satellite reported 591 hotspots in Sumatra.
Several parts of Selangor, however, got a brief respite from the choking smog after heavy rain in Hulu Selangor.
The DOE warned: “Those convicted of open burning will be fined up to RM500,000 or jailed up to five years or both. A maximum compound of RM2,000 may also be meted out.”
Its director-general Halimah Hassan said in a statement yesterday that cremation, burning of religious paraphernalia and barbecues were exempted from the ban.
KUALA LUMPUR, June 16 — Putrajaya is among the eight areas which recorded unhealthy air quality due to the haze with the air pollution index (API) reading exceeding 100 at noon today.
The API recorded in Putrajaya at 11am was 101.
The other areas which recorded high API were Port Klang (142), Petaling Jaya (131), Shah Alam (130), Banting (120), Kuala Selangor (101) in Selangor as well as Cheras (133) and Batu Muda (128) here.
According to the Department of Environment (DOE) website, www.doe.gov.my, the number of areas with unhealthy air quality rose to eight compared with seven at 7am.
A total of 31 areas from 51 DOE air quality monitoring stations throughout the country which recorded moderate API included areas such as Nilai, Negri Sembilan, with a reading of 100 while 11 other areas recorded good air quality.
An API of 101 to 200 denotes an unhealthy level. Air quality is assumed to be good for an API of zero to 50, moderate for an API of 51 to 100, very unhealthy for an API of 201 to 300 and hazardous for an API of more than 301.
The deterioration in air quality experienced in the Klang Valley now is due to the cross-border haze from Sumatra, Indonesia.
Meanwhile, the Malaysian Meteorological Department forecasts no rain nationwide in the morning but showers in the evening in several states.
According to the department’s website, Malaysia is experiencing the Southwest Monsoon which contributes to the hot and dry weather.
The situation is expected to last until September. — Bernama
Visitors take pictures against the haze covering the Putra Mosque (left) and Putra Perdana, the office of the prime minister, in Putrajaya on June 16, 2012. — Reuters pic June 16, 2012
Thursday 15 March 2012 16.36 GMT, air pollution in London hit record levels on Thursday due to a combination of traffic fumes, relatively still weather and an influx of dirty air from the north of England and northern France.
Pollution levels in London are even higher than last Easter, when the government was forced to issue a smog alert.
Adults and children with lung problems, adults with heart problems and all older people should not take any "strenuous physical activity" while pollution is at the recorded levels. The general population is advised to reduce exercise too.
Since December 2008, air quality stations in London have been monitoring smaller particles called PM2.5s, which are able to enter the bloodstream more easily and cause more respiratory damage than larger particles, such as PM10s.
Poor air quality has been linked to nearly one in five deaths a year in London.
The capital's poor air quality, caused largely by traffic, has seen the UK facing £300m in fines for breaching EU targets.
One block falls, pushing the one in front of it, making another one fall, and then another. This figurative image, a chain reaction of falling blocks, can be seen in recent scientific research that shows the domino effect and consequences of the environment on health. Tel Aviv University (TAU) researcher Dr. Yariv Gerber of TAU’s School of Public Health at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine has discovered that air pollution can impact cardiac events like heart attack and stroke as well as cause repeated episodes of these cardiac events.
As a result, air pollution is not only a danger to the environment but it is also harmful for the human body. It can have major risks such as respiratory infections, lung cancer, and heart disease. The project was done in collaboration with Professor Yaacov Drory and funded by the Environmental and Health Fund in Jerusalem. In the study, cardiac patients who lived in areas with high pollution had a 40 percent higher chance of having a second heart attack as compared to patients who lived in places with low air pollution. The findings were presented at the San Diego Epidemiological Meeting of the American Heart Association in March and the Annual Meeting of the Israeli Heart Society in April.
“We know that like smoking cigarettes, pollution itself provokes the inflammatory system. If you are talking about long-term exposure and an inflammatory system that is irritated chronically, pollution may well be involved in the progression of atrial sclerosis that manifests in cardiac events,” remarked Gerber in a prepared statement.
Gerber started the project with the goal of demonstrating a connection between the long-term effects of air pollution and the heart attack risks for myocardial infarction (MI) patients. In the experiment, the scientists analyzed data from 1,120 first-time MI patients who had stayed at one of eight hospitals in central Israel between 1992 and 1993. The participants were all under 65 years of age when admitted to the hospital and were then given a follow-up interview in 2011, 19 years after initial contact with the investigators.
The researchers measured air quality in the areas where patients lived with monitoring stations and a group of scientists looked at the information collected at the Technion in Haifa. They adjusted for outside factors like disease severity and socio-economic status, and concluded that there was a relationship between pollution and negative clinical outcomes like mortality, heart attack, heart failure, and stroke. When compared to the statistics of participants who lived in less polluted areas, the participants residing in the most polluted areas had a 43 percent higher risk of having a second heart attack or suffering congestive heart failures as well as 46 percent higher chance of having a stroke. The study also reported that people who lived in heavily polluted areas were 35 percent more likely to die 20 years after the first attack then those who lived in less polluted areas.
The influence of air pollution on the human body maybe even greater than what was discovered in the study.
Ships pour out large quantities of pollutants into the air, principally in the form of sulphur and nitrogen oxides.
The emissions from ships engaged in international trade in the seas surrounding Europe - the Baltic, the North Sea, the north-eastern part of the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea - were estimated to have been 2.3 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide and 3.3 million tonnes of nitrogen oxides a year in 2000.
In contrast to the progress in reducing emissions from land-based sources, shipping emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxides are expected to continue increasing by as much as 40 per cent by 2020. As a result, by 2020 the emissions from international shipping around Europe is expected to equal or even surpass the total from all land-based sources in the 27 EU member states combined.
Air pollution in coal mines is mainly due to the fugitive emission of particulate matter and gases including methane (CH4), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx). The use of explosives releases carbon monoxide (CO), which poses a health risk for mine workers. Dust and coal particles stirred up during the mining process, as well as the soot released during coal transport, can cause severe and potentially deadly respiratory problems. The mining operations like drilling, blasting, movement of the heavy earth moving machinery on haul roads, collection, transportation and handling of coal, screening, sizing and segregation units are the major sources of emissions and air pollution. Under-ground mine fire is also a major source of air pollution in some of the coal fields.
High levels of suspended particulate matter increase respiratory diseases such as chronic bronchitis and asthma cases while gaseous emissions contribute towards global warming besides causing health hazards to the exposed population.
Methane emission from coal mining depends on the mining methods, depth of coal mining, coal quality and entrapped gas content in coal seams.
Source:http://knol.google.com/k/coal-mining-and-pollution#
Air Pollution From Fossil Fuels
Burning of fuels like- coal, petroleum and gasoline emits very harmful chemicals in the air like- sulphour dioxide, carbon monoxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and other harmful gases. The use of fossil fuels is largely spread, whether it is in home, industries, or automobiles.
90% of air pollution is due to fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is the major cause for global warming. Burning of fuels causes chain of pollution. From air pollution, it leads to water pollution. Nitrogen oxide and sulphour dioxide is responsible for causing acid rain. Acid rain then again leads to water pollution. When water is polluted, it affects the life of aquatic animals and plants.
Air pollution is very hazardous to human life as it invites number of diseases and illness, some of them are- respiratory problems, causing redness of eyes and irritation, throat infections, chest problems, cough and many more. Small children are majorly affected by the air pollution, some of the common symptoms, which are seen in them, are- bronchitis and asthma.
Source: http://letsbefamous.com/16/how-burning-of-fossil-fuels-pollutes-the-air/
Air Pollution From Factories
One on the major complaints made by factory reformers concerned the state of the buildings that they children were forced to work in. Dr. Ward, who visited textile factories in Manchester in 1819 wrote: "I have had frequent opportunities of seeing people coming out from the factories and occasionally attending as patients. Last summer I visited three cotton factories with Dr. Clough of Preston and Mr. Barker of Manchester and we could not remain ten minutes in the factory without gasping for breath. How it is possible for those who are doomed to remain there twelve or fifteen hours to endure it? If we take into account the heated temperature of the air, and the contamination of the air, it is a matter of astonishment to my mind, how the work people can bear the confinement for so great a length of time." Read more...
Source: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/IRpollution.htm
Plane Pollution
In regulating aircraft and airports, several compelling interests compete: safety, international commerce, and environmental quality. Of these, safety issues receive perhaps most of the attention, garnering large headlines in the wake of airplane accidents. But the issue of the effect of airports on the environment and human health has heated up in recent years as public interest and citizen groups contest airport expansion on environmental and health grounds, and the airline and airport industries attempt to meet increasingly stringent regulations in these areas.
Airports are known to be major sources of noise, water, and air pollution. They pump carbon dioxide (CO2), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and nitrogen oxides (NOx) into the atmosphere, as well as dump toxic chemicals—used to de-ice airplanes during winter storms—into waterways. But determining the extent of airplanes' contribution to local, national, and international levels of pollution is difficult—cars and airplanes entering and leaving airports produce roughly equivalent quantities of ozone precursors. Auxiliary power units (APUs), little jet engines in the planes' tails that power appliances while the planes are at the gate, and ground support vehicles also produce quantities of pollutants. And competing local and national political forces make airport pollution hard to regulate; much of the air pollution is local, but automobile and airplane emissions are regulated both nationally and internationally.
The growth of air traffic further frustrates mitigation of environmental problems. Air traffic is expected to double nationally by the year 2017 and internationally by 2010, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). At least 32 of the 50 busiest U.S. airports have plans to expand operations, according to a survey conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), published in the environmental group's October 1996 report Flying Off Course: Environmental Impacts of America's Airports. According to the FAA, 60 of the 100 biggest airports want to at least build or extend runways.
Source: http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action;jsessionid=24872960250565AD83769411C675A4A9?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%
Air Pollution From Vehicles
Engine related air pollution:
Vehicles which burn fossil fuels just aren't 100% efficient at that task. Of the fuel that goes into the engine a portion of it comes out unburned. Another part of it is heated by the conditions in the engine and its component molecules are cracked and reformed and a portion of these emerge in the exhaust. There are also other fuel componenets (additive packages, sulfur, detergents) that are either not burnable or only partially consumed and discharges. Finally there is the air that is consumed in the engine. The oxygen is largely combined with carbon to produce carbon dioxide, th nitrogen is combined with oxygen under the engines high heat and pressure to form various nitrogen oxides (lumped together as NOx)
Fuel and fuelling related pollution:
During fuellig and as the vehicle stands part of the fuel evaporates and is emitted to the ir. This emission contains voltile organic compounds ranging from methane and butane to cyclic compounds like benzene and othe aromatics
Other air pollution
As a vehicle travels it stirs p road dust which is a particulate air pllutant. In addition the tyres are slowly wearing away shedding latex and artificial rubber as particulate. This is a potential allergen.
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_vehicles_cause_air_pollution#ixzz1d1eHXMcn
Source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_vehicles_cause_air_pollution
