Search

Construction activities contribute a significant source of airborne particulate matter (PM) which causing substantial impact on air quality. This study is conducted to investigate the ambient particulate matter concentration at the construction jobsite for newly shop lot 5-storeys building in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. The study focusing on coarse and fine airborne particulate sizes which involved PM0.3, PM0.5, PM1 and PM2, thus to evaluate the meteorological factors namely on relative humidity, temperature and wind speed around the construction site during construction activities on PM concentrations. The study is carried out within two different construction phases to evaluate the PM emissions that sourced from the construction activities. Phase 1 is the preliminary stage of the project plan where site preparation activities are carried out, while Phase 2 is the early stage of the project plan where the superstructure construction activities will be involved. Results showed that the concentration of particulate matter collected in Phase 2 is found higher than in Phase 1, as more extensive construction activities are being carried out in Phase 2. The meteorological conditions including temperature, relative humidity and wind speed are also found to be able influenced the characterization of PM according to their sizes. Mitigation and controlling measures to alleviate the emissions of construction activities can be adopted and improved in order to reduce the atmospheric pollution that elicited by PM.

Haze has become a major concern as it has highly significant impacts over Malaysia by several occurrences of haze episodes throughout the country. During the haze periods, airborne particulate matter (PM10) was found as the major pollutant while the other air quality parameters remained within the permissible healthy standards. Haze arise by fires from land clearing in Indonesia that builds up during the dry season affecting tourism, transportation, biodiversity, and contributing to health problems across the region. The variations of the PM10 concentrations are due to various atmospheric processes of emissions, dilutions and accumulations that are affected by meteorological conditions. In this study, an analysis of haze status will be performed using PM10 values from two commercial urban and industrial areas, which involved Kajang and Shah Alam, and one station that was located outside the city, which is in Kota Bahru, Kelantan, that was selected as a rural station for comparison. The aim of this study is to determine the correlation of PM10 concentrations with the meteorological factors (namely on temperature, wind speed and ultraviolet intensity) at different monitoring stations (at different type of land use). Twelve (12) multiple regression models with interactions for each station were developed from data sets of 90; the best model was used to forecast the upcoming haze weather.