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Decades of research indicate that most Census‐measured U.S. racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately impacted by environmental disamenities, all else equal; the study of this is referred to as Environmental Justice (EJ) research. Yet both U.S. and world history show that another minoritized group is religious minorities. If so, this has health consequences and policy implications. Houses of worship (HOWs) are visible and physical symbols of religion. We use tax records to locate Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist or Hindu HOWs within census tracts for the entire contiguous United States. We combine these data with EJSCREEN data to analyze whether air pollution risks are greater in their presence. We find that, even holding constant race, ethnicity, and poverty, two non‐census‐measured religious minorities' HOWs are disproportionately impacted by air pollution in the United States: Jews and Muslims. This new knowledge has consequences for EJ policy and social justice‐motivated environmental research. Related Articles: Ash, John. 2010. "New Nuclear Energy, Risk, and Justice: Regulatory Strategies for an Era of Limited Trust." Politics & Policy 38(2): 255–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2010.00237.x. Fowler, Luke. 2022. "Searching for Green Elephants and Other Mythical Creatures during the Trump Years: Partisanship and Congressional Voting on Environmental Legislation." Politics & Policy 50(5): 913–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12499. Tubadji, Annie. 2023. "You'll Never Walk Alone: Loneliness, Religion, and Politico‐economic Transformation." Politics & Policy 51(4): 661–95. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12538. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the birth of air pollutant regulation and its transformation, which, formerly under state control, moved on to a regime based on market instruments. The author shows the gradual commercialization of the approach to air pollution problems, whose origins can be traced to the United States, summarized in three different historic moments: the Emission Trading Program (1982), the Average between Refineries (1985), and the Acid Rain Program (1995). These experiments, in a framework of the command and control environmental regulatory regime, led to the creation of the first atmospheric contaminant emissions market in world history and opened up the road to the new "cap and trade" environmental regulatory regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emissions of most pollutants that result in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) formation have been decreasing in the United States. However, this trend has not been uniform across all sectors or regions of the economy. We use integrated assessment models (IAMs) to compute marginal damages for PM2.5-related emissions for each county in the contiguous United States and match location-specific emissions with these marginal damages to compute economy-wide gross external damage (GED) due to premature mortality. We note 4 key findings: First, economy-wide, GED has decreased by more than 20% from 2008 to 2014. Second, while much of the air pollution policies have focused to date on the electricity sector, damages from farms are now larger than those from utilities. Indeed, farms have become the largest contributor to air pollution damages from PM2.5-related emissions. Third, 4 sectors, comprising less than 20% of the national gross domestic product (GDP), are responsible for ~75% of GED attributable to economic activities. Fourth, uncertainty in GED estimates tends to be high for sectors with predominantly ground-level emissions because these emissions are usually estimated and not measured. These findings suggest that policymakers should target further emissions reductions from such sectors, particularly in transportation and agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of ammonia on air pollution in the U.S. Topics include research led by atmospheric scientist Jeff Collett, the role of agricultural sources and automobiles in urban areas in causing air pollution, and air quality regulations affecting ammonia emissions in Great Britain. Possible U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policies are noted.

This article examines the ways that American approaches to public administration and policy are heavily shaped by a Cartesian ontology that emphasizes abstract notions of time, space, and consequences that result. It proposes an alternative drawing on Heideggerian phenomenology. It examines the implication of moving our perspectives from abstracted notions time and space to authentic encounters in the world, and uses environmental policy as a reference point to investigate potential expressions. It concludes with several propositional claims regarding the implications of this shift for environmental policy narrowly and democratic governance more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The well-established association between economic output and carbon emissions has led researchers in sociology and related disciplines to study new approaches to climate change mitigation, including policies that stabilize or reduce GDP growth. Within this degrowth approach, working time reduction is a key policy lever to reduce emissions as well as protect employment. In the United States, the abdication of responsibility for mitigation by the federal government has led to the emergence of state climate leadership. This study is the first to analyze the relationship between emissions and working hours at the state level. Our findings suggest that over the 2007-2013 period, state-level carbon emissions and average working hours have a strong, positive relationship, which holds across a variety of model estimation techniques and net of various political, economic, and demographic drivers of emissions. We conclude that working time reduction may represent a multiple dividend policy, contributing to enhanced quality of life and lower unemployment as well as emissions mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 20 years have passed since Executive Order 12898 put environmental justice (EJ) issues on the policy agenda. Since this time, EJ has technically remained a policy priority at all levels of government. However, despite this apparent commitment to EJ, research has shown over the decades after the passage of the Executive Order, we still see persistent trends in inequality of air pollution exposure by race. This begs the question: are EJ policies actually working to create environmentally just outcomes? This article seeks to evaluate this question by examining the impact of state EJ policies on disproportionate exposure to air pollution, with the goal of understanding what types of state actions, if any, are associated with decreases in pollution inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of effective policies to reduce emissions from goods movement should consider local and remote life cycle effects as well as barriers for mode shifting. Using uni- and multimodal freight movements by truck, rail, and ocean-going vessel (OGV) associated with California, a life cycle assessment (LCA) is developed to estimate the local and remote emissions that occur from freight activity inside and associated with the state. Long-run average per tonne-kilometer results show that OGVs emit the fewest emissions, followed by rail, then trucks, and that the inclusion of life cycle processes can increase impacts by up to 32% for energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 4,200% for conventional air pollutants. Efforts to reduce emissions through mode shifting should recognize that infrastructure and market configurations may be inimical to mode substitution. A uni- and multimodal shipping emissions assessment is developed for intrastate and California-associated freight movements to illustrate the life cycle impacts of typical trips for certain types of goods. When targeting GHG reductions in California, it should be recognized that heavy-duty trucks are responsible for 99% of intrastate goods movement emissions. An assessment of future freight truck technology improvements is performed to estimate the effectiveness of strategies to meet 2050 GHG reduction goals. Whereas aggressive improvements in fuel economy coupled with alternative vehicles and fuels can significantly reduce GHG emissions, to meet 2050 goals will likely require zero carbon emission vehicle technology. The value of using LCA in GHG reduction policy for transportation systems is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metropolitan smog alerts are prominent public information campaigns designed to enhance public health and to curb driving and other emissions. Unlike many other voluntary information-based environmental policies, air quality alerts target household behavior via forecast information about ambient concentrations rather than firm or product characteristics. This paper explores behaviors with high emissions (driving) and with high exposure (outdoor recreation) and underscores the difference between altruistic and risk aversion motivations. Behavioral impacts are identified using the threshold nature of daily air quality forecasts. A regression discontinuity (RD) design finds elderly users and exercisers tend to curtail their use of a major park following smog alerts. The RD design also reveals that households do not drive less on smog alert days. Juxtaposing high emissions behavior with high exposure behavior in the same study highlights how public forecast information may better trigger some responses and struggle to trigger others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the pressure placed by cities on their environment with respect to urban air pollution. The analysis employs a spatially explicit global dataset of emissions to estimate urban emissions of four pollutants from a sample of 8038 cities world-wide in 2005. A cross-sectional regression analysis is then conducted to examine the association of urban air pollution with socioeconomic and geographical factors. The results confirm that urban pollution is associated primarily, but not exclusively, with demographics. The results suggest that urban pollution is likely to increase with population growth and that economic modernisation is unlikely to provide much relief from the pressures placed by coming population growth. The findings suggest that policy-makers must focus on reducing the emissions intensity of production activities within cities, especially from the energy sector, if they are to avoid rapid growth in urban air pollution in coming decades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We apply a fixed-effects model to examine the impact of trade and environmental policies on air quality at ports along the U.S.–Mexico border. We control for other factors influencing air quality, such as air quality of cities near the border, volume of traffic flows and congestion. Results show the air quality improved after 2004, when the diesel engine policy was applied. We see mixed results for the trade policy, whose implementation time varies across ports along the international border. Controlling for air quality in cities near the border is essential for assessing the policy contributions to air quality. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The U.S. EPA Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) represents an extensive, publicly available dataset on toxics and, as such, has contributed to reducing the releases and disposal of toxic chemicals. The TRI, however, reports on a wide range of releases from different sources, some of which are less likely to generate a human or ecological hazard. Furthermore, the TRI is quantity based and does not take into account the relative toxicity of chemicals. In an effort to utilize the TRI more effectively to guide environmental management and policy, this work provides an in-depth analysis of the quantity-based TRI data for year 2007 at industry sector, state, and chemical levels and couples it with toxicity potentials. These toxicity potentials are derived from the U.S. EPA''s TRACI (Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts) characterization factors for cancer, non-cancer and ecotoxicity. The combination of quantity-based and toxicity-based analysis allows a more robust evaluation of toxics use and priorities. Results show, for instance, that none of the highest priority chemicals identified through the toxicity-based evaluation would have been identified if only quantity-based evaluation had been used. As the chemicals are aggregated to the state and industry sector levels, the discrepancies between the evaluation methods are less significant. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We estimate a negative binomial model with fixed effects to examine the impact of spatial differences in environmental regulation on manufacturing capital flows. Using a newly available data set, we find that stricter air quality standards with respect to ozone deter births of polluting plants, suggesting that heterogeneity in regulatory standards may create a spatial browning process. We also find that spatial differences in environmental regulation do not play a role in the location decision of plants that are not pollution-intensive. Finally, we also examine the effects on capital flows with respect to three other criteria air pollutants regulated under the amendments to the Clean Air Act. We find that births of particulates-intensive manufacturers are deterred by stricter regulation with respect to particulates emissions but the location decisions of plants that emit high levels of carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide are not significantly affected by increased regulation of the respective criteria pollutant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency''s Self-Policing Policy (more commonly referred to as the Audit Policy) waives or reduces penalties when companies voluntarily discover, disclose, and correct environmental violations. One goal of the Audit Policy is to encourage companies to conduct environmental audits in order to identify poor environmental performance. Thus, the regulatory flexibility associated with the Audit Policy should reduce subsequent chemical emissions. While several studies examine predictors of the Audit Policy, no studies examine if facilities that use the Policy decrease their chemical emissions as a result. The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of the Audit Policy on changes in Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) emissions among a sample of 178 facilities operating in the chemical and allied product industry. The results of that analysis suggest that facilities that use the policy have similar subsequent emissions trends as facilities that do not use the policy. Moreover, the results also suggest that formal enforcement actions are the best predictor of TRI reductions. These findings persist despite other regulator and company controls. In terms of environmental policy, the results suggest that self-policing may not improve or deteriorate environmental performance in the chemical and allied products industry. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the authority of the Clean Air Act (CAA), is required to promulgate National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQSs) for criteria air pollutants, including ozone. Each NAAQS includes a primary health-based standard and a secondary or welfare-based standard. This paper considers only the science used for revision of the primary standard for ozone in 2008. This paper summarizes deliberations of a small group of scientists who met in June 2007 to review the scientific information informing the EPA Administrator’s proposed revision of the 1997 standard. The Panel recognized that there is no scientific methodology that, in the absence of judgment, can define the precise numerical level, related averaging time, and statistical form of the NAAQS. The selection of these elements of the NAAQS involves policy judgments that should be informed by scientific information and analyses. Thus, the Panel members did not feel it appropriate to offer either their individual or collective judgment on the specific numerical level of the NAAQS for ozone. The Panel deliberations focused on the scientific data available on the health effects of exposure to ambient concentrations of ozone, controlled ozone exposure studies with human volunteers, long-term epidemiological studies, time- series epidemiological studies, human panel studies, and toxicological investigations. The deliberations also dealt with the issue of background levels of ozone of nonanthropogenic origin and issues involved with conducting formal risk assessments of the health impacts of current and prospective levels of ambient ozone. The scientific issues that were central to the EPA Administrator’s 2008 revision of the NAAQS for ozone will undoubtedly also be critical to the next review of the ozone standard. That review should begin very soon if it is to be completed within the 5-year cycle specified in the CAA. It is hoped that this Report will stimulate discussion of these scientific issues, conduct of additional research, and conduct of new analyses that will provide an improved scientific basis for the policy judgment that will have to be made by a future EPA Administrator in considering potential revision of the ozone standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of articles about planning including those focusing on settlement house work and social reform, the development of heating and cooking technology in the U.S. in the 19th century and emergence of historic sites as tourist destinations in the U.S. in the late 19th century.

The article presents abstracts on city planning-related topics, including visions of waterfront development in postindustrial Philadelphia, the construction of a town planning perception of Colombo, and city planning and the U.S. census.

In contrast to many discussions based on annual emissions, this article presents calculations and projections of cumulative contributions to the stock of atmospheric CO2 by the major players, China, Europe, India, Japan and the USA, for the period 1900-2080. Although relative contributions to the climate problem are changing dramatically, notably due to the rapid industrialization of China, long-term responsibilities for enhanced global warming have not been transparently quantified in the literature. The analysis shows that if current trends continue, by the middle of this century China will overtake the USA as the major cumulative contributor to atmospheric concentrations of CO2. This has enormous implications for the debate on the ethical responsibilities of the major greenhouse gas emitters. Effective climate policy will require both the recognition of shared responsibility and an unprecedented degree of cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present findings from a multiyear expert judgment study that comprehensively characterizes uncertainty in estimates of mortality reductions associated with decreases in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the U.S. Appropriate characterization of uncertainty is critical because mortality- related benefits represent up to 90% of the monetized benefits reported in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) analyses of proposed air regulations. Numerous epidemiological and toxicological studies have evaluated the PM2.5—mortality association and investigated issues that may contribute to uncertainty in the concentration—response (C—R) function, such as exposure misclassification and potential confounding from other pollutant exposures. EPA's current uncertainty analysis methods rely largely on standard errors in published studies. However, no one study can capture the full suite of issues that arise in quantifying the C—R relationship. Therefore, EPA has applied state-of-the-art expert judgment elicitation techniques to develop probabilistic uncertainty distributions that reflect the broader array of uncertainties in the C—R relationship. These distributions, elicited from 12 of the world's leading experts on this issue, suggest both potentially larger central estimates of mortality reductions for decreases in long-term PM2.5 exposure in the U.S. and a wider distribution of uncertainty than currently employed in EPA analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Clean Air Act establishes New Source Review (NSR) programs that apply to construction or modification of major stationary sources. In 2002 and 2003, EPA revised its rules to narrow NSR's coverage of renovations. Congress mandated a National Research Council study of the revisions' impacts. In that study, we used an electricity-sector model to explore possible effects of the equipment replacement provision (ERP), the principal NSR change directed at power plants. We find that, assuming implementation of the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), tight enforcement of the prerevision NSR rules would likely lead to no or limited decreases in national emissions compared to policies such as ERP. However, emissions might shift forward in time because the previous NSR rules would depress allowance prices, discouraging banking and encouraging allowance use. Only under the most aggressive prerevision NSR enforcement scenario, in which essentially all coal capacity is compelled to retrofit controls by 2020, do NOx emissions fall below ERP levels. Even then, total 2007-2020 SO2 emissions are unaffected. Further decreases in national emissions could be accomplished more cheaply by tighter emissions caps than through NSR because caps provide incentives for efficient operating strategies, such as fuel switching, as well as retrofits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Understanding the shape of the concentration-response curve for particles is important for public health, and lack of such understanding was recently cited by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a reason for not tightening the standards. Similarly, the delay between changes in exposure and changes in health is also important in public health decision making. We addressed these issues using an extended follow-up of the Harvard Six Cities Study. METHODS: Cox proportional hazards models were fit controlling for smoking, body mass index, and other covariates. Two approaches were used. First, we used penalized splines, which fit a flexible functional form to the concentration response to examine its shape, and chose the degrees of freedom for the curve based on Akaike's information criterion. Because the uncertainties around the resultant curve do not reflect the uncertainty in model choice, we also used model averaging as an alternative approach, where multiple models are fit explicitly and averaged, weighted by their probability of being correct given the data. We examined the lag relationship by model averaging across a range of unconstrained distributed lag models. RESULTS: We found that the concentration-response curve is linear, clearly continuing below the current U.S. standard of 15 μg/m³, and that the effects of changes in exposure on mortality are seen within two years. CONCLUSIONS: Reduction in particle concentrations below U.S. EPA standards would increase life expectancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the number, surface and volume concentrations, and size distribution of particles next to the 1-710 freeway during February through April 2006. 1-710 has the highest ratio (up to 25%) of heavy-duty diesel vehicles in the Los Angeles highway network. Particle concentration measurements were accompanied by measurements of black carbon, elemental and organic carbon, and gaseous species (CO, CO2). Using the incremental increase of CO2 over the background to calculate the dilution ratio, this study makes it possible to compare particle concentrations measured next to the freeway to concentrations measured in roadway tunnels and in vehicle exhaust. In addition to the effect of the dilution ratio on the measured particle concentrations, multivariate linear regressions showed that light and heavy organic carbon concentrations are positively correlated with the particle volume in the nucleation and accumulation modes, respectively. Solar radiation was also positively correlated with the particle surface concentration and the particle volume in the accumulation (40–638 nm) mode, presumably as a result of secondary particle formation. The methods developed in this study may be used to decouple the effect of sampling position, meteorology, and fleet operation on particle concentrations in the proximity of freeways, roadway tunnels, and in street canyons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biomass combustion emissions make a significant contribution to the overall particulate pollution in the troposphere. Wildland or prescribed burns and residential wood combustion emissions can vary due to differences in fuel, season, time of day, and the nature of the combustion. Inadequate understanding of the relevance of these biomass combustion emissions is due to the lack of characterization of open combustion emissions and the limited understanding of the differences between these and residential wood combustion. To provide new insight to biomass combustion emissions, sampling was conducted in several types of conditions. Semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOC) were collected during four separate prescribed burns in three different ecosystems, Mariposa Sequoia Grove within Yosemite National Park, CA, desert brushes of central rural Nevada, and Toiyabye National Forest near Lake Tahoe, NV. SVOC samples were also collected under controlled conditions for several wildland fuels, including conifer needles, wildland grasses, and sagebrush. Fireplace emissions from simulated residential wood combustion were also collected and are included here for comparison. A high degree of variability was found in the emissions of organic carbon, elemental carbon, levoglucosan, methoxy phenols, and organic acids. The variability in the emissions of levoglucosan does not correlate with the PM2.5 gravimetric mass and thus may affect source apportionment estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the State Implementation Plan for attaining the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone, the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality has created a Highly Reactive Volatile Organic Compounds (HRVOC) Emissions Cap and Trade Program for industrial point sources in the Houston/Galveston/Brazoria area. This program has a number of unique features, including its focus on a limited group of ozone precursors and its provisions for trading emissions based on atmospheric reactivity. This series of papers examines the potential air quality impacts of this new emission trading program through photochemical modeling of potential trading scenarios; this first paper in the series describes the air quality modeling methods used to assess potential trades, the potential for localized increases in ozone concentrations (ozone ‘hot spots’) due to HRVOC emission trading, and the use of reactivity scales in the trading. When HRVOC emissions are traded on a mass basis, the simulations indicate that trading of HRVOC allowances between facilities resulted in less than 0.15 ppb (<0.13%) and 0.06 ppb (<0.06%)increases in predicted maximum, area-wide 1-h averaged and 8-h averaged ozone concentrations, respectively. Maximum decreases in ozone concentrations associated with trading, as opposed to across-the-board reductions, were larger than the increases. All of these changes are small compared to the maximum changes in ozone concentrations due to the VOC emissions from these sources (up to 5–10 ppb for 8 h averages; up to 30 ppb for 1-h averages). When emissions of HRVOCs are traded for other, less reactive emissions, on a reactivity weighted basis, air quality simulations indicate that daily maximum ozone concentrations increased by less than 0.3%. Because these relatively small changes (<1%) are for unlikely trading scenarios designed to produce a maximum change in ozone concentrations (all emissions traded into localized regions), the simulations indicate that the implementation of the trading program, as currently configured and possibly expanded, is unlikely to cause localized increases in ozone concentrations (‘hot spots’). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing the public health benefits from air pollution control measures is assisted by understanding the relationship between mobile source emissions and subsequent fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure. Since this relationship varies by location, we characterized its magnitude and geographic distribution using the intake fraction (iF) concept. We considered emissions of primary PM2.5 as well as particle precursors SO2 and NO x from each of 3080 counties in the US. We modeled the relationship between these emissions and total US population exposure to PM2.5, making use of a source–receptor matrix developed for health risk assessment. For primary PM2.5, we found a median iF of 1.2 per million, with a range of 0.12–25. Half of the total exposure was reached by a median distance of 150km from the county where mobile source emissions originated, though this spatial extent varied across counties from within the county borders to 1800km away. For secondary ammonium sulfate from SO2 emissions, the median iF was 0.41 per million (range: 0.050–10), versus 0.068 per million for secondary ammonium nitrate from NO x emissions (range: 0.00092–1.3). The median distance to half of the total exposure was greater for secondary PM2.5 (450km for sulfate, 390km for nitrate). Regression analyses using exhaustive population predictors explained much of the variation in primary PM2.5 iF (R 2=0.83) as well as secondary sulfate and nitrate iF (R 2=0.74 and 0.60), with greater near-source contribution for primary than for secondary PM2.5. We conclude that long-range dispersion models with coarse geographic resolution are appropriate for risk assessments of secondary PM2.5 or primary PM2.5 emitted from mobile sources in rural areas, but that more resolved dispersion models are warranted for primary PM2.5 in urban areas due to the substantial contribution of near-source populations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article informs that according to a study conducted by Colmer et al., document trends in the spatial distribution of airborne particulate matter smaller in diameter. It mentions that most and least polluted tracts in 1981 remain the most and least polluted in 2016, with disadvantaged communities more likely to have higher pollution ranks at any given time in the U.S. It also mentions about U.S. federal policy-making on environmental justice.

Spatial estimations are increasingly used to estimate geocoded ambient particulate matter (PM) concentrations in epidemiologic studies because measures of daily PM concentrations are unavailable in most U.S. locations. This study was conducted to a) assess the feasibility of large-scale kriging estimations of daily residential-level ambient PM concentrations, b) perform and compare cross-validations of different kriging models, c) contrast three popular kriging approaches, and d) calculate SE of the kriging estimations. We used PM data for PM with aerodynamic diameter ≤ 10 μm (PM10) and aerodynamic diameter ≤ 2.5 μm (PM2.5) from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the year 2000. Kriging estimations were performed at 94,135 geocoded addresses of Women's Health Initiative study participants using the ArcView geographic information system. We developed a semiautomated program to enable large-scale daily kriging estimation and assessed validity of semivariogram models using prediction error (PE), standardized prediction error (SPE), root mean square standardized (RMSS), and SE of the estimated PM. National- and regional-scale kriging performed satisfactorily, with the former slightly better. The average PE, SPE, and RMSS of daily PM10 semivariograms using regular ordinary kriging with a spherical model were 0.0629, -0.0011, and 1.255 μg/m3, respectively; the average SE of the estimated residential-level PM10 was 27.36 μg/m3. The values for PM2.5 were 0.049, 0.0085, 1.389, and 4.13 μg/m3, respectively. Lognormal ordinary kriging yielded a smaller average SE and effectively eliminated out-of-range predicted values compared to regular ordinary kriging. Semiautomated daily kriging estimations and semivariogram cross-validations are feasible on a national scale. Lognormal ordinary kriging with a spherical model is valid for estimating daily ambient PM at geocoded residential addresses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an overview of the mercury control technologies aimed at lessening the mercury emissions from coal-fired electric utility boilers in the U.S. The author stressed that mercury emissions from anthropogenic emission sources posed a global threat that needs to be subsided. In response, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proclaimed the Clean Air Mercury Rule to permanently cap and abridge emissions of mercury from coal-fired power plants. Another regulation promulgated is the Clean Air Interstate Rule, which compels further reduction of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from these power plants. Among the control technologies stressed include flue-gas desulfurization and limestone forced- oxidation.

Presents abstracts of articles related to city planning. "Promoting Retail Innovation: Knowledge Flows During the Emergence of Self-Service and Supermarket Retailing in Britain," by Andrew Alexander, Gareth Shaw and Louise Curth; "The Nature of Op Art: Bridget Riley and the Art of Nonrepresentation," by Simon Rycroft; "Was the 1937 U.S. Housing Act a Pyrrhic Victory?," by D. Bradford Hunt.

Abstract: Using patent data from the United States, Japan, and Germany, this paper examines both innovation and diffusion of air pollution control equipment. Whereas the United States was an early adopter of stringent sulfur dioxide (SO2) standards, both Japan and Germany introduced stringent nitrogen dioxide (NO X ) standards much earlier than the US. Nonetheless, in both cases, tightened standards in the US led to more domestic patenting, but not more foreign patenting. Overall, the data suggest that inventors respond to environmental regulatory pressure in their own country, but not to foreign environmental regulations. Moreover, any technology transfer that occurs appears to be indirect. Domestic innovation occurs even for technologies that have already experienced significant innovative activity abroad and utilities purchase pollution abatement equipment from domestic firms. However, patent citation data from the US do show that earlier foreign patents are an important building block for NO X pollution control innovations in the US. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Chemical mass balance receptor models (CMBs) use measured pollutant concentrations, along with source information, to apportion the contributions of primary sources to the measured concentrations. CMBs can be used to evaluate the accuracy of the emission inventories that underlie State Implementation Plan (SIP) modeling, by providing an allocation of emissions to individual source categories. CMBs, however, traditionally have not accounted for the chemical reaction and differential deposition or fractionation that occur between the source and receptor. This means that they have historically had severe limitations in apportioning secondary particulate matter (PM), which is an especially important component of fine PM (PM2.5). Stafford and Liljestrand developed a method to account for fractionation in CMBs using depletion factors based on a solution of the steady-state advection-dispersion equation, including gravitational settling, dry deposition, and first-order chemical reaction. In the research presented here, the method of Stafford and Liljestrand was tested using gaseous and PM ambient concentration data from the Los Angeles, CA, air shed, along with traffic source profiles specific to Los Angeles and the CMB7 receptor model of the U.S. Environment Protection Agency. Including fractionation increased nitrate apportioned from 5% and 6% to 83% and 86% for Claremont, CA, and Long Beach, CA, respectively. This is significant, because CMBs have historically had difficulty apportioning nitrate. Including fractionation increased the ammonium apportioned by a factor of 7. The method could be used in future case studies to apportion secondary organic carbon as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the spatial distribution and enforcement of air polluting facilities in the state of New Jersey, as listed in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Aerometric Information Retrieval System. Results show that air-polluting facilities tend to concentrate near minority neighborhoods, although this relationship is partially explained by factors of population density, manufacturing employment, and land use. Other results suggest that facilities in areas with a relatively high percentage of minority population tend to have a weaker record of environmental enforcement as compared to other facilities. Of the socioeconomic variables considered, employment in manufacturing appears to be the most strongly related to environmental enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarizes the activities of the National Research Council Committee on Research Priorities for Airborne Particulate Matter, formed in 1997 in response to a request by Congress to establish a committee that would identify research needs, set a research agenda, and monitor research progress on airborne particulate matter. The article describes the committee's achievements and research progress in relation to key scientific questions relevant to establishing National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 2000–2002 time period, between 36 and 56% of ozone monitors each year in the United States failed to meet the current ozone standard of 80 ppb for the fourth highest maximum 8-hr ozone concentration. We estimated the health benefits of attaining the ozone standard at these monitors using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program. We used health impact functions based on published epidemiologic studies, and valuation functions derived from the economics literature. The estimated health benefits for 2000 and 2001 are similar in magnitude, whereas the results for 2002 are roughly twice that of each of the prior 2 years. The simple average of health impacts across the 3 years includes reductions of 800 premature deaths, 4,500 hospital and emergency department admissions, 900,000 school absences, and > 1 million minor restricted activity days. The simple average of benefits (including premature mortality) across the 3 years is $5.7 billion [90% confidence interval (CI), 0.6–15.0] for the quadratic rollback simulation method and $4.9 billion (90% CI, 0.5–14.0) for the proportional rollback simulation method. Results are sensitive to the form of the standard and to assumptions about background ozone levels. If the form of the standard is based on the first highest maximum 8-hr concentration, impacts are increased by a factor of 2–3. Increasing the assumed hourly background from zero to 40 ppb reduced impacts by 30 and 60% for the proportional and quadratic attainment simulation methods, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses how Europe will launch an updated emissions trading program for greenhouse gases in 2005 which is much larger and more complex than the U.S. effort. Role of market-based policies in environmental regulation and in the formation of future European and international climate change policies; Consideration of the plans for the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) to address global climate change implement a more consistent trading program among nations; Innovations regarding provisions that provide flexibility in monitoring and compliance; Difficulty associated with the preparation and review of National Allocation Plans; Use of auctions in the distribution of tradable emissions allowances in the U.S. INSETS: EUROPEAN UNION TERMINOLOGY;KEY FEATURES OF EU ETS;EFFECTIVE EMISSIONS TRADING PROGRAMS: A VIEW FROM THE ECONOMICS;SUMMARY OF U.S. TRADING PROGRAMS

ISO 14001 is an international standard for Environmental Management Systems, adopted by over 36,000 organizations worldwide. This paper attempts to determine the length of time after which a given company has implemented ISO 14001 experiences emission reduction. The sample used is a group of 264 manufacturing facilities in the USA, which represent 23 percent of all the ISO 14001 certified organizations in the US, analyzed throughout the period from 1996 to 2001. The results show that 75 percent of the companies experienced a reduction in their emissions, among which 53 percent had already done so just one year after obtaining ISO 14001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benefit-cost analyses of environmental regulations are increasingly mandated in the United States. Evaluations of criteria air pollutants have focused on benefits and costs associated with adverse health effects. Children are significantly affected by the health benefits of improved air quality, yet key environmental health policy analyses have not previously focused specifically on children's effects. In this article we present a "meta-analysis" approach to child-specific health impacts derived from the U.S. Clean Air Act (CAA). On the basis of data from existing studies, reductions in criteria air pollutants predicted to occur by 2010 because of CAA regulations are estimated to produce the following impacts: 200 fewer expected cases of postneonatal mortality; 10,000 fewer asthma hospitalizations in children 1-16 years old, with estimated benefits ranging from $20 million to $46 million (1990 U.S.$); 40,000 fewer emergency department visits in children 1-16 years old, with estimated benefits ranging from $1.3 million to $5.8 million; 20 million school absences avoided by children 6-11 years old, with estimated benefits of $0.7-1.8 billion; and 10,000 fewer infants of low birth weight, with estimated benefits of $230 million. Inclusion of limited child-specific data on hospitalizations, emergency department visits, school absences, and low birth weight could be expected to add $1-2 billion (1990 US$) to the $8 billion in health benefits currently estimated to result from decreased morbidity, and $600 million to the $100 billion estimated to result from decreased mortality. These estimates highlight the need for increased consideration of children's health effects. Key needs for environmental health policy analyses include improved information for children's health effects, additional life-stage-specific information, and improved health economics information specific for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the first 2 years of his presidential term, George W. Bush matured as a political leader and neutralized many of his harshest critics. A glaring exception to this characterization is the area of environmental policy. The Bush administration adamantly refused to advance a meaningful strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to commit the United States to the Kyoto Protocol. At the same time, a number of highly public disputes compromised the legitimacy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This appraisal reviews the Bush administration's performance midway through its first term across three pivotal environmental concerns: air pollution, climate change, and toxics remediation. Though environmental proponents denounced the U.S. EPA's provocative policy positions, there are no indications that this criticism has had much political impact. The assessment concludes with an examination of the politics behind the Bush administration's growing anti-environmentalism and some speculation regarding its future electoral implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the implications of the precautionary principle for environmental regulation in the U.S. Control of hazardous pollutants; 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.

Objectives. To expand scholarly attention to a neglected area of environmental policy and politics, I attempt to test several empirical propositions drawn from the small body of existing research on the politics of market-based environmental regulation. Methods. I analyze public comments on a recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulatory action guiding states on the design of various market-based air pollution control programs. I focus on the types of commenting organizations and the nature, extent, and foundations of their support or opposition to market-based regulatory instruments. Results. I find more support for than opposition to the use of economic incentive programs in air pollution control. The support from business commenters is not surprising, but the level of support expressed by state regulators departs from previous research findings. Environmental groups are the principal dissenters. Overall, the findings suggest both change and continuity in the politics of air pollution control policymaking, with some possibility of a shift in the contours of the advocacy coalitions in the pollution control policy network. Conclusions. Market-based environmental regulation is still an evolving phenomenon in American public policy. Further research on the politics of its development is in order, and the opportunities to pursue such research are substantial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses what has worked and what has not worked in emission trading systems in the United States from the standpoint of environmental justice. Explanation for the opposition to emission trading programs; Factors that have been identified as important in affecting the spatial variation in the human health and ecological impacts; Characteristics of emission trading systems; Policy changes that can be made to improve the justice of emission trading systems. INSET: Trading Rules and Trading Ratios: Three Basic Approaches to....

The emissions factor modeling component of the motor vehicle emissions inventory (MVEI) modeling suite is currently being revised by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). One of the proposed changes in modeling philosophy is a shift from using link-based travel activity data to trip-based travel data for preparing mobile emissions inventories. Also as part of the revisions, new speed correction factors (SCFs) will be developed by CARB for the revised model. The new SCFs will be derived from vehicle emissions on 15 new driving cycles, each constructed to represent a typical trip at a specific average speed. This paper discusses how the new SCFs will affect transportation conformity and emissions inventory development, and evaluates the differences in total emissions produced by trip-based and link-based distributions of speed and vehicle miles of travel (VMT). We simulated both link-based and trip-based speed-VMT distributions using travel data from the Sacramento and San Diego travel demand models. On the basis of the simulation results, there is reason to expect that mobile emissions inventories constructed using the proposed trip-based philosophy will differ markedly from those constructed in the current manner. Noting that results may vary by region, increases are expected in the CO and HC inventory levels, with concomitant decreases in the NO[subx] mobile emissions inventories.

Particulate matter (PM) emitted from fossil fuel-fired units can be classified as either filterable or condensible PM. Condensible PM typically is not measured because federal and most state regulations do not require sources to do so. To determine the magnitude of condensible PM emissions relative to filterable PM emissions and to better understand condensible PM measurement issues, a review and analysis of actual U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Method 202 (for in-stack condensible PM[sub10]) and EPA Method 201/201A (for in-stack filterable PM[sub10]) results were conducted. Methods 202 and 201/201A results for several coal-burning boilers showed that the condensible PM, on average, comprises approximately three-fourths (76%) of the total PM[sub10] stack emissions. Methods 202 and 201/201A results for oil- and natural gas-fired boilers showed that the condensible PM, on average, comprises 50% of the total PM[sub10] stack emissions. Methods 202 and 201/201A results for oil-, natural gas-, and kerosene-fired combustion turbines showed that the condensible PM, on average, comprises 69% of the total PM[sub10] stack emissions. Based on these limited measurements, condensible PM can make a significant contribution to total PM[sub10] emissions for fossil fuel-fired units. A positive bias (indicating more condensible PM than is actually emitted) may exist in the measured data due to the conversion of dissolved sulfur dioxide to sulfate compounds in the sampling procedure. In addition, these Method 202 results confirm that condensible PM, on average, is composed mostly of inorganic matter, regardless of the type of fuel burned.

The article focuses on the effort of reducing greenhouse gasses by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.N. Environment Program in the U.S. The project aims to develop innovative ways to cool down the atmosphere. To mitigate such problem, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had suggests the reduction of the greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, the reduction of methane emission proves to be ecologically friendly in the long run as F. Sherwood, an atmospheric chemist and Nobel laureate at the University of California in Irvine, had said. On the other hand, diminishing the emission of methane and other hydrocarbons such as buthane, ethane and propane would also reduce the tropospheric ozone, a green house gas and a major component of smog.

Congressional architects of environmental policy in the 1970s sought to resolve air, water, and land-based pollution problems by using a policy approach termed "partial preemption." A major objective was to maintain a significant policy-making role for U.S. state officials and, at the same time, attain federal environmental quality standards. The relative locus of political control varies according to the type of partial pre-emption adopted, i.e., compulsory or voluntary. Voluntary forms of partial pre-emption encourage but do not require state participation in federal environmental programs.