Page 19 - Fundamentals of Air Pollution

xviii Preface

In the twenty years since publication of the first edition of Fundamentals
of Air Pollution (1973), and the nine years since the second edition (1984),
the fundamentals have not changed. The basic physics, chemistry, and
engineering are still the same, but there is now a greater in-depth under-
standing of their application to air pollution. This edition has been edited,
revised, and updated to include the new technology available to air pollu-
tion practitioners. Its contents are also influenced to a great extent by the
passage of the U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA 90). These
amendments have changed the health and risk-based regulations of the
U.S. Clean Air Act to technology-driven regulations with extensive penalty
provisions for noncompliance.
We have added more detailed discussion of areas that have been under
intensive study during the past decade. There has been a similar need to
add discussion of CAAA 90 and its regulatory concepts, such as control of
air toxics, indoor air pollution, pollution prevention, and trading and bank-
ing of emission rights. Ten more years of new data on air quality have
required the updating of the tables and figures presenting these data.
We have expanded some subject areas, which previously were of concern
to only a few scientists, but which have been popularized by the media to the
point where they are common discussion subjects. These include "Global
Warming," "The Ozone Hole," "Energy Conservation," "Renewable Re-
sources," and "Quality of Life."
With each passing decade, more and more pollution sources of earlier
decades become obsolete and are replaced by processes and equipment
that produce less pollution. At the same time, population and the demand
for products and services increase. Students must keep these concepts in
mind as they study from this text, knowing that the world in which they
will practice their profession will be different from the world today.
By virtue of its division into six sections, this text may be used in several
ways. Part I, by itself, provides the material for a short course to introduce
a diverse group of students to the subject—with the other five parts serving
as a built-in reference book. Parts I, II, and II, which define the problem,
can provide the basis for a semester's work, while Parts IV, V, and VI,
which resolve the problem, provide the material for a second semester's
work. Part IV may well be used separately as the basis for a course on the
meteorology of air pollution, and the book as a whole may be used for an
intensive one-semester course.
The viewpoint of this book is first that most of the students who elect
to receive some training in air pollution will have previously taken courses
in chemistry at the high school or university level, and that those few who
have not would be well advised to defer the study of air pollution until
they catch up on their chemistry.
The second point of view is that the engineering design of control systems
for stationary and mobile sources requires a command of the principles of