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Air Quality and Pollution Control

Lawrence K. Wang, Jerry R. Taricska,
Yung-Tse Hung, and Kathleen Hung Li

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHARACTERISTICS OF AIR POLLUTANTS
STANDARDS
SOURCES
EFFECTS
MEASUREMENT
GAS STREAM CALCULATIONS
GAS STREAM CONDITIONING
AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT
CONTROL
CONCLUSIONS
EXAMPLES
NOMENCLATURE
REFERENCES

1. INTRODUCTION
The Engineer’s Joint Council on Air Pollution and Its Control defines air pollution as
“the presence in the outdoor atmosphere of one or more contaminants, such as dust,
fumes, gas, mist, odor, smoke or vapor in quantities, of characteristics, and of duration,
such as to be injurious to human, plant, or property, or which unreasonably interferes
with the comfortable enjoyment of life and property.”
Air pollution, as defined above, is not a recent phenomenon. Natural events always
have been the direct cause of enormous amounts of air pollution. Volcanoes, for
instance, spew lava onto land and emit particulates and poisonous gases containing ash,
hydrogen sulfide (H S), and sulfur dioxide (SO ) into the atmosphere. It has been esti-
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mated that all air pollution resulting from human activity does not equal the quantities
released during three volcanic eruptions: Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883, Katmai in
Alaska in 1912, and Hekla in Iceland in 1947.

From: Handbook of Environmental Engineering, Volume 1: Air Pollution Control Engineering
Edited by: L. K. Wang, N. C. Pereira, and Y.-T. Hung © Humana Press Inc., Totowa, NJ
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