• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.301-314
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• 2018

Objectives: The aim of this study was to introduce the overall progress of exposure assessment to humidifier disinfectant (HD); to present participants' demographic characteristics, exposure characteristics to humidifier disinfectant, and exposure classification; and furthermore to compare those characteristics between survivors and non-survivors. Methods: An assessment of environmental exposure to HD was conducted using modified HD-specific questionnaires that had been previously validated. We analyzed the data from 4,482 participants who had been potentially exposed to HD and had registered with the KEITI (Korea Environmental Industry & Technology Institute) from September 2016 to May 2018 (the fourth survey). Environmental exposure assessments were performed as follows: 1) contact with participants, 2) environmental exposure assessment though face-to-face interviews, 3) assessment review and coding, and 4) exposure rating. Results: Overall, survivors made up 77.1% (3,457 subjects) and non-survivors made up 22.9% (1,025 subjects). When compared with the survivors, non-survivors had a higher proportion of subjects aged >60 years and subjects who answered as suffering lung damage and having purchased HD because it is "Beneficial to health" (p<0.05). For the exposure characteristics compared to survivors, non-survivors had a higher proportion of cases of distance from humidifier to face being less that one meter and the spray direction being toward the face (p<0.05). Overall, respondents who used the "Oxy Ssak Ssak New Gaseupgi Dangbun", "Aekyung Gaseupgi Mate", "Homeplus Gaseupgi Chungjungje", and "E-Mart Gaseupgi Salgyunje" products made up 66.1, 12.3, 4.0, and 3.6%, respectively, and 72.5% of respondents used products with PHMG as the active chemical. When compared with survivors, non-survivors had a higher proportion of use of "Oxy Ssak Ssak New Gaseupgi Dangbun" but a lower proportion of use of products with CMIT/MIT, PGH, or PHMG as the active chemical. Conclusions: This study provided demographic characteristics and exposure assessment for applicants who have been injured by HD. In spite of the limitations of performing past exposure assessment through a questionnaire survey, such as recall bias, useful results may be obtained by comparing survivors with non-survivors. Further studies such as the exposure rating method and so on are necessary to assess past exposure to HD.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.310-320
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• 2014

Backgrounds: Endotoxin, which found in the outer membrane of the gram-negative bacteria cell wall, makes up almost all of the lipopolysaccharide(LPS). When people are exposed to endotoxin,it can result in diverse health effects such as an airway irritation and inflammation, fever, malaise, bronchitis, allergic asthma, toxic pneumonitis, hypersensitivity lung disease. Cases among the elderly, children or pregnant can occur more frequently than a healthy adult if they are repeatedly exposed to the existing endotoxin. Therefore, we investigated and assessed the environmental characteristics associated with the airborne endotoxin concentration level in six hospital lobbies. Method: Endotoxin from indoor air in six hospital lobbies was measured by an area sampling method and analyzed according to American Society for Testing and Materials International(ASTM international) E2144-01. Total suspended particulate(TSP), carbon dioxide($CO_2$), temperature and humidity were also measured by using direct reading measurements or airborne sampling equipment at the same time. Environmental characteristics were appropriately divided into two or three groups for a statistics analysis. One-way analysis variable(one-way ANOVA) was used to examine a difference of the endotoxin concentration, depending on the environmental characteristics. In addition, only variables with p-value(p<0.25) were eventually designed to the best model by using multiple regression analysis. Results: The correlation analysis result indicated that TSP(p=0.003) and $CO_2$(p<0.0001) levels were significantly associated with endotoxin concentration levels. In contrast, temperature(p<0.068) and humidity(p<0.365) were not associated with endotoxin concentration. Levels of endotoxin concentration were statistically different among the environmental characteristics of Service time(p=0.01), Establishment of hospital(p<0.001), Scale of hospital(p=0.01), Day average people using hospital(p=0.03), Cleaning time of lobby(p=0.05), Season(p<0.001), and Cleaning of ventilation system(p<0.001) according to ANOVA. Finally, the best model(Adjusted R-square=72%) that we designed through a multiple regression test included environmental characteristics related to Service time, Area of lobby, Season, Cleaning of ventilation system, and Temperature. Conclusions: According to this study, our result showed a normal level of endotoxin concentration in the hospital lobbies and found environmental management methods to reduce the level of endotoxin concentration to a minimum. Consequently, this study recognized to be requirement for the management of ventilation systems and an indoor temperature in order to reduce the level of endotoxin concentration in the hospital lobbies.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.438-446
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• 2013

Objectives: This study was performed in order to determine airborne fungi levels in homes and find related factors that may affect airborne fungi concentration. Methods: Fifty homes were study subjects for measuring airborne fungi. For sampling airborne fungi, the impaction method on agar plates was used and samples were counted as colony forming units per cubic meter of air ($CFU/m^3$). In addition, information regarding housing characteristics and atopic disease in each home were collected via questionnaire. Results: The geometric means (GM) of airborne fungi concentrations in fifty living rooms and bedrooms were 68.03 and 62.93 $CFU/m^3$, respectively. The GM of airborne fungi concentration in atopy homes was 78.42 $CFU/m^3$. This was higher than non-atopy homes' 54.34 $CFU/m^3$ (p-value=0.051). In the results of the multiple regression analysis, outdoor airborne fungal concentration proved a strong effective factor on indoor airborne fungal concentration. Also, construction year, floor area of house, indoor smoking and frequency of ventilation were factors that showed a significant association with indoor airborne fungi concentration. Conclusions: The results of this study show that some housing and living characteristics may affect the development and increase of airborne fungi. In addition, exposure to airborne fungi may be a risk factor for the prevalence of childhood atopic diseases.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.109-121
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• 1985

A study on the image identification of urban streetscape is valuable for illuminating identity that is not yet fully approached in the field of environmental design. This analysis of urban streetscape for image identification allows us to make a more detailed exploration of an important approaching methods in dealing with the structural characteristics of identity. As a matter of fact, the earlier indirect studies on this image identification were made by environmental designers, such as architectural and urban designer in the field of environmental perception and came to its environmental cognition & environmental pattern research with assistances by such researchers as K. Lynch A. Rapoport & Christopher Alexander. Through its environmental perception research, we can see its structural characteristics that is aesthetic & visual structural contents of physical environmental elements. And we can see its cognitive characteristics through the environmental cognitive research, that is continuity, territoriality, identity of place, uniqueness or individuality, meaning & symbolism. Through its environmental pattern research, we can see its physical, socio - economic, cultural and symbolic pattern identification contents, that is physical form of the city, style of the street, pattern of streetscape, socio- economic & geographical locality, arid life cycle, life style, common style of the behavior, cultural pattern of the activity, socio - cultural expression of the symbol. In these process, we can set up a set of the environmental design criterias from those three integral studies for identity. And for an environmental research, Tongsung-Ro around the CBD (central business district) in Taegu City was selected for a case study, because this streetscape is suitable for that approaching methods in this study.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.8-13
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• 2008

Emissions from automobiles have long been considered a prime source of pollutants involved in smog formation and ozone production. Especially VOCs are associated with serious environmental problems such as photo-chemical smog as well as human health effects. Since motor vehicles are a major source of VOCs, estimating of emission from mobile source is the most important factor to control VOCs. VOCs are emitted from various pollution like motor vehicles, mobile and stationary source that has characteristics of toxicity, cancer-causing, bio-accumulation, durability in air and diffusion can exert a bad influence upon human health and environment. However we don't have any standard or regulation about VOCs emissions. This study is summarized as VOCs emission characteristics from in-use light-duty diesel and LPG fueled vehicles. The vehicle exhaust-gas test mode is CVS cycle and nier-10 cycles that developed on EPA and National Institute of Environmental Research. TO-14 method (Toxic Organic) was chosen for VOCs analysis from EPA in USA. This study results will be useful when make a emission factor and rule making of emission standard about domestic VOCs emission for the improve to air condition.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.195-201
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• 2013

Local governments are establishing their own greenhouse gas reduction goal and are playing a important role to respond to climatic changes. However, there are difficulties in quantitative analyses such as estimation of future greenhouse gas emission and computation of reduction potential, which are procedures required to establish mid to long term strategies to realize of low carbon society by each local governments. Also, reduction measures must reflect characteristics of each local government, since the reduction power of each local government can differ according to characteristics of each. In order to establish strategies that reflect characteristics of local governments, types of greenhouse gas emission from cities were classified largely into residential city, commercial city, residential commercial city, agriculture and fishery city, convergence city, and industrial city. As a result of analyzing basic unit of greenhouse gas emission by local government during 2007 in terms of per population, household and GRDP based on the type classification, significant results were deduced for each type. To manage the amount of the national greenhouse gas, reduction measures should be focused on the local governments that emits more than the average of each type's GHG emission.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.30 no.5 s.81
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• pp.487-492
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• 2004

Building materials are composed of very complex chemical compounds, and these indoor building materials discharge very much Volatile Organic Compounds(VOCs). We performed the environmental chamber test to investigate the Total VOCs(TVOCs) emission characteristics and emission factors about chemical and natural coating materials. As the result, we concluded that TVOCs emission are high at initial time and decreased in course of time. Natural paint was low emission level for TVOCs than chemical paint by small chamber test. The TVOCs emission factor-time profile showed a good fit with the results from the measured and predicted value.

• Proceedings of the Korean Environmental Health Society Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.259-262
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• 2005

This study aims to identify the relationship between characteristics of aqueous organic matter and chlorination by-products formation potential according to temporal effect of Juam reservoir in Sun-Choen. The molecular weight distribution and chemical composition of precursors and their relationship with disinfection by-products(DBPs) were investigated. Most of the organic matters was responsible for the major DBP precursors in the raw water are small compounds with a molecular weight less than IKDa, Aromatic contents determined by SUVA correlated well with DBPs, THMs, and HAAs formation. Especially, THMFP/DOC showed better correlation with SUVA than HAAFP/DOC and DBPFP/DOC with SUVA in Juam reservoir. Therefore, effective removal of small molecules or hydrophobic organic matter prior to disinfection process will significantly reduce the DBP concentration in the finished water.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.9-24
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• 1986

This study aims at providing the data in order to understand home management and to mange home efficiently through attempting systems approach to home management focused on purchase decision making and marital role structure. For the purpose of this study, regarding housing purchase decision making process as a system, environmental characteristics as inputs, marital role structure and the satisfaction of purchase management as outputs, relation between inputs and outputs; the understanding about these components was established as research problem. And then the framework of analysis being based on theoretical references was suggested, and questionnaires were administrated to housewives. The result of this study is as follows: 1) Marital role structure was differently shown according to the phases of decision making process. 2) Marital role structure was differently shown according to the level of environmental characteristics. 3) The statisfaction of purchase manag ment was influenced by environmental characteristics. According to these results, home management can be understood in the view of system. That is, the morphostatic characteristics of family system can be grasped in environmental supra system in conideration of the structure of managerial sub system; the morphogenic characteristics of family system can be grasped centering on the relationship to environment.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.311-315
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• 2008

This study was performed to investigate propagation characteristics and effects of road traffic noise generated from vehicles. Noise levels of expressway and general road were measured at four points in a straight line based on distance from the road, and analyzed. The average noise level of expressway was 78.9 dBA at 5 m, 76.4 dBA at 10 m, 72.0 dBA at 20 m, 69.0 dBA at 30 m. That of general road was lower about $3.1{\sim}3.5\;dBA$ than that of expressway. There was no significant difference in distance attenuation between expressway noise and general road noise. The farer the distance from source is, the more the attenuation is. The influence range of noise is assessed by noise environmental standards or road noise limits. Noise levels of the time zone were measured at a boundary line of apartment to grasp noise variation by time. The time zone of lowest noises was $3{\sim}4$ a.m. and that of highest noise was $8{\sim}10$ a.m. Data recorded on tapes were analyzed to understand the characteristics of frequency because these characteristics are important factors to plan the noise reduction measures, namely path measures.