Found 2226 publications. Showing page 30 of 223:
Survey of emissions of volatile organic chemicals from handheld toys for children above 3 years
NILU has, on behalf of the Norwegian Environment Agency, performed a screening study to identify volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) emitted from handheld toys for children. The goal was to identify individual VOCs emitted from toys at room temperature and to evaluate what impact the toys may have on the composition and concentrations of VOCs in indoor air. 12-30 individual VOCs were identified in each toy and 65-143 individual VOCs were detected with a concentration higher than 1 µg/m3. VOCs emitted at high concentrations and/or with hazardous properties were cyclohexanone, aromatic VOCs (xylenes, toluene, ethylbenzene), cyclic siloxanes and 2,2,4-Trimethyl-1,3-pentanediol diisobutyrate (TXIB). A regulated hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC-141 b) was also detected from 5 toys. The toys with high concentrations of cyclohexanone and cyclic siloxanes affected the composition and concentrations of VOCs in indoor air.
NILU
2020
Monitoring of long-range transported air pollutants in Norway. Annual Report 2019.
This report presents results from the monitoring of atmospheric composition and deposition of air pollution in 2019, and focuses on main components in air and precipitation, particulate and gaseous phase of inorganic constituents, particulate carbonaceous matter, ground level ozone and particulate matter. In 2019, it was an unusual wide-spread episode during April causing high concentrations of most pollutants at several sites.
NILU
2020
The main goal for the “Towards better exploitation of Satellite data for monitoring Air Quality in Norway using
downscaling techniques” (Sat4AQN) project was to evaluate the potential of spatially downscaling satellite data using a
high-resolution Chemical Transport Model (CTM) to spatial scales that are more relevant for monitoring air quality in
urban areas and regional background sites in Norway. For this demonstration project, we focused on satellite aerosol
optical density (AOD) and particulate matter (PM) estimates.
NILU
2020
2020
The current report provides a short overview of previous years’ studies on long-term trends in O3, NO2 and PM and the role of meteorological variability for the concentration of these pollutants. The previous studies on the link between trends and meteorology has shown that these links could be estimated by a careful design of model setups using CTMs (chemical transport models). The conclusions from this work is that CTMs are certainly useful tools for explaining pollutant trends in terms of the separate impact of individual physio-chemical drivers such as emissions and meteorology although computationally demanding. The statistical GAM model that have been developed as part of the recent ETC/ACM and ETC/ATNI tasks could be considered as complementary to the use of CTMs for separating the influence of meteorological variability from other processes. The main limitation of the statistical model is that it contains no parameterisation of the real physio-chemical processes and secondly, that it relies on a local assumption, i.e. that the observed daily concentrations could be estimated based on the local meteorological data. We found clear differences in model performance both with respect to geographical area and atmospheric species. In general, the best performance was found for O3 (although not for peak levels) with gradually lower performance for NO2, PM10 and PM2.5 in that order. With respect to area, the model produced the best predictions for Central Europe (Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Austria, Czech Republic) and poorer agreement with observations in southern Europe. Although the GAM model did not detect many meteorology induced long-term trends in the data, the model is well suited for separating the influence of meteorology from the other driving forces, such as emissions and boundary conditions. The GAM model thus provides robust and smooth long-term trend functions corrected for meteorology as well as the perturbations from year to year, reflecting the variability in weather conditions. One could consider to define a set of performance criteria to decide if the GAM model is applicable for a specific station and parameter.
ETC/ATNI
2020
Health Risk Assessment of Air Pollution in Europe. Methodology description and 2017 results
This report describes the methodology applied to assess health risks across Europe in 2016, published in the European Environmental Agency’s Air Quality in Europe – 2019 report. The methodology applied is based on the work by de Leeuw and Horálek (2016), with a few adjustments. To estimate the health risk related to air pollution, the number of premature deaths and years of life lost related to exposure to fine particulate matter, ozone and nitrogen dioxide exposure were calculated for 41 countries across Europe. The results show that the largest health risks are estimated for the countries with the largest populations. However, in relative terms, when considering e.g., years of life lost per 100 000 inhabitants, the largest relative risks are observed in central and eastern European countries, and the lowest are found for the northern and north-western parts of Europe. Additionally to the assessment, a sensitivity analysis was undertaken to comprehend how much the presumed baseline concentration levels, the concentration below which no health effects are expected, affect the estimations. In addition, a benefit analysis, assuming attainment of the PM2.5 WHO guidelines across Europe, shows a reduction over 30 % of the 2017 premature deaths and years of life lost numbers.
ETC/ATNI
2020
In this report, we investigate the relative expanded uncertainty (REU) formula for comparing low-cost sensors (microsensors) and reference measurements. The purpose of the REU formula is to check if microsensor measurements follow the data quality objective (DQO) of the European Air Quality Directive 2008/50/EC to be considered equivalent to a reference instrument. The project aimed to obtain a good understanding of the REU formula for its proper use in current and future projects involving microsensors.
NILU
2020
Kartlegging av NO2-konsentrasjoner i luft ved E16 Arna – Vågsbotn ble utført av NILU på oppdrag fra Statens vegvesen.
Målingene ble utført med passive prøvetakere ved 10 steder i området Gaupås-Kalsås-Blinde. Prosjektet ble gjennomført
vinteren 2020 (28. januar – 24. mars) i et område som er utsatt for inversjonsforhold i vintermånedene.
Vinteren 2019-2020 viste seg til å bli en mild vinter, inversjonsforhold ble ikke registrert. NO2-konsentrasjonen var høyest den første uken målingene pågikk og ble gradvis lavere i påfølgende uker. De siste 2 ukene var påvirket av mindre trafikk som en følge av pandemitiltak. Middelkonsentrasjonen ved det mest forurensede målestedet over hele måleperioden var 22,9 μg/m3. Sammenligning av resultatene fra måleområdet med observasjoner fra målestasjoner i Bergen viste at NO2-konsentrasjonen rett ved E16 var på samme nivå som ved veinære stasjoner i Bergen.
NILU
2020
This report presents the ICP Materials database for the period October 2017 - November 2018. It includes environmental data from the ICP Materials trend exposure programme for 2017 - 2018, and in addition, data for temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation amount back to the end of the previous annual exposure porgramme in October/November 2015. The database consists of meteorological data (T, RH and precipitation amount) and pollution data, as gas concentrations, amounts of ions in precipitation, particle concentrations and amounts of particle deposition.
NILU
2020