Road Dust Control

Archive for the ‘PM10’ Category

An environmental advocacy group known as Environment Virginia released a report this week that identifies Alexandria’s Mirant coal-fired power plant as the second dirtiest in Virginia. The report, titled "America’s Biggest Polluters," used carbon dioxide emissions data from 2007 to conduct an analysis of the plants and create a ranking system. The finding comes at a time when city officials are coordinating with Mirant to erect a 30-foot windscreen in an effort to control fugitive dust from the plant.

"It’s very disappointing, but I must say it’s not surprising," said Councilwoman Del Pepper. "I’m hopeful that with the $ 34 million we got to improve the plant will address some of the problems."

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The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency says air quality last year improved.

An annual report shows that air quality trends for pollutants for which air quality standards have been developed – along with some heavy metals, nitrates, sulfates, volatile organic and toxic compounds – are continuing to show downward or stable trends that are well below the established standards.

Air quality during 2008 was either good or moderate more than 96 percent of the time throughout Illinois.

There were 14 days air quality in some part of Illinois was considered "Unhealthy" for sensitive groups, this compares to 24 "Unhealthy" for sensitive groups days in 2007.

The improved numbers come even though a more stringent federal standard for measuring acceptable air quality was used for the 2008 report.

Percentage changes from 1999 through 2008 show decreases of 14 percent for particulate matter (PM10), 20 percent particulate matter (PM2.5), 15 percent for sulfur dioxide, 13 percent for nitrogen dioxide, 47 percent for carbon monoxide, 18 percent for lead and 12 percent for ozone.

Environmental protection officials in Beijing have had an easy time since the Olympics last summer.

The city recorded fewer polluted days following its smog-cleaning campaign for the Olympics, and authorities last month announced that the city’s air quality has reached the highest level in decades after meeting its annual target for "blue sky" days one month ahead of schedule, for two consecutive years.

But the fact that Beijing’s air is now clean is bad news for reporters.

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The dust from a mine is significantly different from the dust you find in your home. Dust in your home primarily consists of dead skin while mine dust is almost exclusively a mineral in a fine powder form.

Most written definitions of mine dust include the following: dust from drilling, blasting, smashing or handling of rock. The majority of the dust created by one of these activities are too large to stay in the air for an extended period of time and account for about 40 percent of all dust created at a mine site. The remainder is less than 10 micrometers in size. The majority of these particles is less than 2.5 micrometers and come from the exhaust of equipment used on the mining site.

The smallest size particle is what is most hazardous to the population’s health. The larger dust particles are an eye sore and are cost a lot to clean up, but are less hazardous to one’s health.

The smaller particles do make certain health hazards that include respiratory problems due to the fact that they are in the air that is breathed in to the lungs. This can be minimized if mining personnel were to wear masks designed to filter out the dust.

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If they can define it, they can measure it, and then they will Tax it.

Several studies considered the relation between long-term exposure to particulate matter (PM) and total mortality, as well as mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Our aim was to provide a comprehensive review of European epidemiological studies on the issue.

Methods: We searched the Medline database for epidemiological studies on air pollution and health outcomes published between January 2002 and December 2007.
We also examined the reference lists of individual papers and reviews. Two independent reviewers classified the studies according to type of air pollutant, duration of exposure and health outcome considered.

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