Review on urban vegetation and particle air pollution – Deposition and dispersion

a time as one year after leaving the Rehabilitation Unit, and about one quarter were not in competitive jobs but were in sheltered employment. Only just over one quarter were still working in ordinary jobs. Their average wage was £8 I is. 6d. Furthermore if one compares the type of work these patients were able to perform there was a definite decline from their premorbid position. The social class grouping before and after rehabilitation was Class II, i-i, Class III, 9-3, Class IV, 4-6, and Class V, IO-I4. Indeed the authors report that 'even the least handicapped of these patients presented continuous problems . . .' and it is noted that such a programme requires special personnel and a great deal of work. Comparing these results with the extra cost in personnel, time, and effort (which could be directed elsewhere) a Doctor Beeching of the psychiatric services would probably scrap such a rehabilitation service before it even started. But is this the right way of looking at it? The authors point out that such a programme, if applied throughout the country, would affect about 6,ooo patients. If the failure rate were the same as in this experiment, about I,500 would be rescued from a disabled life in a mental hospital and once more returned to an at least partially useful and, one assumes, more satisfying life. Obviously more is involved here than mere economics. We were interested to read that as regards behaviour at the Rehabilitation Centre and during the follow-up year 'There were no outstanding differences' between the schizophrenic and the non-schizophrenic rehabilitees. It appears that the group of schizophrenics had difficulties in social adjustment which were even greater than those of work adjustment. '. . . the men concerned had greater difficulty in living outside hospital, than in working outside hospital. If, however, adequate arrangements are made to cater for these various needs, there seems to be every reason to expect that a small selected group of long stay schizophrenic patients can be successfully resettled in work.' The experiment and the report show the high standards we have come so confidently to expect from Dr. Wing and his colleagues, and the publication will be read with interest, not only by psychiatrists, but by all those concemed with rehabilitation problems of chronically disabled patients. J. HOENIG

https://oem.bmj.com/content/oemed/23/2/161.2.full.pdf

The Mechanics of Aerosols

The literature on atmospheric particulate maffer (PM), or atmospheric aerosol, has increased enormously over the last 2 decades and amounts now to some 1500—2000 papers per year in the refereed literature. This is in part due to the enormous advances in measurement technologies, which have allowed for an increasingly accurate understanding of the chemical composition and of the physical properties of atmospheric particles and of their processes in the atmosphere. The growing scientific interest in atmospheric aerosol particles is due to their high importance for environmental policy. In fact, particulate maffer constitutes one of the most challenging problems both for air quality and for climate change policies. In this context, this paper reviews the most recent results within the atmospheric aerosol sciences and thepoticy needs, which have driven much ofthe increase in monitoring and mechanistic research over the last 2 decades. The synthesis reveals many new processes and developments in the science underpinning climate—aerosol interactions and effects of PM on human health and the environment. However, while airborne particulate matter is responsible for globally important influences on premature human mortality, we stijl do not know the relative importance of the different chemical components of PM for these effects. Likewise, the magnitude of the overall effects of PM on climate remains highly uncertain. Despite the uncertainty there are many things that could be done to mitigate local and global problems of atmospheric PM. Recent analyses have shown that reducing black carbon (BC) emissions, using known control measures, would reduce global wanning and delay the time when anthropogenic effects on global temperature would exceed 2°C. Likewise, cost-effective control measures on ammonia, an important agricultural precursor gas for secondary inorganic aerosols (SlA), would reduce regional eutrophication and PM concentrations in large areas of Europe, China and the USA. Thus, there is much that could be done to reduce the effects of atmospheric PM on the climate and the health of the environment and the human population. A prioritized list of actions to mitigate the full range of effects ofPM is currently undeliverable due to shortcomings in the knowledge of aerosol science; among the shortcomings, the roles of PM in global climate and the relative roles of different PM precursor sources and their response to climate and land use change over the remaining decades of this century are prominent. In any case, the evidence from this paper strongly advocates for an integrated approach to air quality and climate policies.

/pdf/particulate-matter-air-quality-and-climate-lessons-learned-52dko62fz5.pdf

Particulate matter, air quality and climate: Lessons learned and future needs

Atmospheric composition change: Ecosystems–Atmosphere interactions

The Meteorological Synthesizing Centre-West (MSC-W) of the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP) has been performing model calculations in support of the Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) for more than 30 years The EMEP MSC-W chemical transport model is still one of the key tools within European air pollution policy assessments Traditionally, the model has covered all of Europe with a resolution of about 50 km x 50 km, and extending vertically from ground level to the tropopause (100 hPa) The model has changed extensively over the last ten years, however, with flexible processing of chemical schemes, meteorological inputs, and with nesting capability: the code is now applied on scales ranging from local (ca 5 km grid size) to global (with 1 degree resolution) The model is used to simulate photo-oxidants and both inorganic and organic aerosols In 2008 the EMEP model was released for the first time as public domain code, along with all required input data for model runs for one year The second release of the EMEP MSC-W model became available in mid 2011, and a new release is targeted for summer 2012 This publication is in-tended to document this third release of the EMEP MSC-W model The model formulations are given, along with details of input data-sets which are used, and a brief background on some of the choices made in the formulation is presented The model code itself is available at wwwemepint, along with the data required to run for a full year over Europe

/pdf/the-emep-msc-w-chemical-transport-model-technical-3y8o0i7tys.pdf

Alexandre Petroff

Papers

Aerosol dry deposition on vegetative canopies. Part I: Review of present knowledge

Aerosol dry deposition on vegetative canopies. Part II: A new modelling approach and applications