Browsing by Subject "Pollutants"

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Bioassessment of sediment quality near storm water outfalls and other sites of concern in Corpus Christi Bay, Texas
(1999) Burgess, Robert Stockton, 1965-; Montagna, Paul A.
The goal of this project was to determine if the ecological integrity of meiofaunal communities was being affected by storm water outfall sediment chemistry, hydrographic parameters, or physical disturbance. Fifteen of 36 study sites were near storm water outfalls. The other 21 sites were reference or highly polluted sites to contrast the outfall sites with background levels and known chemically stressed sites. Because Corpus Christi Bay is a shallow open bay system, physical disturbance due to sediment re-suspension was also estimated. Contamination from non-point sources at storm water sites produced the highest concentrations of both trace metals and cyclic organic pollutants found in this study. Trace metal contaminants were tightly bound to the sediments, and their effects on the biotic communities can only be distinguished from background at one outfall site. Cyclic organic pollutants concentrations were elevated at 66% of the outfall sites, and effects on biotic communities can be distinguished from background at 88% of these sites. The four most contaminated storm water sites exhibited extreme reductions in measures of both macrofaunal and meiofaunal community integrity. Re-suspension was a confounding factor with organic pollutants at five relatively clean outfall sites, where it eliminated the harpacticoid copepod community, and negatively affected the macrofaunal community. In general, of the 36 sites, the 4 most degraded sites were storm water outfalls
Indoor air quality in retail stores
(2011-05) Rhodes, Joshua Daniel; Siegel, Jeffrey A.; Xu, Ying
Retail stores are understudied given the energy, occupant health, and potential sales impacts associated with poor indoor air quality (IAQ). There is also evidence of elevated pollutants in retail environments. This thesis is an exploration of the indoor air quality of retail stores. The first section of this thesis is a literature review on field investigations of the indoor air quality in retail buildings. Sixteen investigations report different measurements in 17 specific types of retail environments. Measurements vary depending on the specific investigation, but include VOCs, SVOCs, particles, microbiological species, and radon. When reported, indoor to outdoor ratios of almost all pollutants are greater than unity, suggesting the importance of indoor sources in retail environments. The second section of this thesis is an analysis of the whole store net emission factor for different retail environments. From the types of pollutants found in the retail store investigations, VOCs were the only pollutant group studied frequently enough to merit this analysis. The final section is an analysis of the potential for pollutant remediation strategies. Two methods, increasing air change rate and air cleaning, are considered with an analysis of the energy penalties associated with each.