• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.169-176
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• 2023

The emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been increasing with anthropogenic contamination. Understanding the prevalence and distribution of these resistant bacteria in environments is crucial for effectively managing anthropogenic pollutants. Lake Gyeongpo in the Gangwon Province of South Korea is known for its diverse ecological features and human interactions. The lake is exposed to pollutants from nonpoint sources, including urban areas, agricultural practices, and recreational activities, which can introduce antibiotics and foster antibiotic resistance in bacteria. The present study investigates Lake Gyeongpo as a potential reservoir for antibiotic-resistant bacteria in a natural ecosystem. A total of 203 bacterial isolates were collected from six sampling locations in Lake Gyeongpo during May, July, and November 2022. Most isolates were taxonomically identified as Pseudoalteromonas, Bacillus, Shewanella, and Vibrio spp.; their abundance showed a spatiotemporal distribution. An antibiotic susceptibility test was conducted on 75 isolates using the disk diffusion method with six drugs according to the CLSI guideline; 42 isolates were resistant to one or more antibiotics. Among these, 15 isolates were identified as multidrug resistant bacteria. This finding suggests the potential anthropogenic impact on Lake Gyeongpo and provides valuable insights into the dissemination of antibiotic resistance caused by anthropogenic pollutants.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.95-106
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• 2023

In the developing country like India, groundwater is the main sources for household, irrigation and industrial use. Its contamination poses hydro-geological and environmental concern. The hazardous waste sites such as landfills can lead to contamination of ground water. The contaminants existing at such sites can eventually find ingress down through the soil and into the groundwater in case of leakage. It is necessary to understand the process of migration of pollutants through sub-surface porous medium for avoiding health risks. On this backdrop, the present paper investigates the behavior of pollutants' migration through porous media. The laboratory experiments were carried out on a soil-column model that represents porous media. Two different types of soils (standard sand and red soil) were considered as the media. Further, two different solutes, i.e., non-reactive and reactive, were used. The experimental results are simulated through numerical modeling. The percentage variation in the experimental and numerical results is found to be in the range of 0.75- 11.23 % and 0.84 - 1.26% in case of standard sand and red soil, respectively. While a close agreement is observed in most of the breakthrough curves obtained experimentally and numerically, good agreement is seen in either result in one case.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.33 no.2 s.95
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• pp.92-97
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• 2007

A series of source tests were conducted to characterize emissions of nitrogen oxide(NOx, NO, $NO_2$), carbon mon oxide(CO), carbon dioxide$(CO_2)$ and total VOCs from portable combustion devices in steady-state using well-mixed chamber. Since use of portable gas range is widespread in houses and restaurants in Korea, it is important to characterize the emission of air pollutants and suggest optimum ventilation rate. Ranges of emission rates of air pollutants from portable gas ranges were $NO \;0.551\sim0.939mg/hr,\;NO_2\;0.354\sim1.080mg/hr,\;NO_x\;1.207\sim1.631mg/hr,\;CO\;1.389\sim4.21mg/hr,\;CO_2\;2426.823\sim2973.495mg/hr$, and VOCs $0\sim0.119mg/h$. Mean of personal exposure and indoor environment level of $NO_2$ by combustion of portable gas range were 74.7 ppb and 65.4 ppb, respectively, suggesting persons using portable gas range in houses and restaurants might be highly exposed. Required ventilation rate to control the air pollutants emitted from portable gas range was maximumly $3.131m^3/hr$ on the basis of $NO_2$ indoor air quality standard.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.513-527
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• 2013

Recently, hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) have been of great concern in Korea, largely due to public awareness on the importance of their impacts on environmental health. A group of HAPs includes a large number of various chemicals such as VOCs, PAHs, PCBs, dioxines, furans, organochlorinated pesticides, and some heavy metals. These groups of pollutants are generally known to have genetic toxicity and to be persistent in the environment. In addition, most of chemicals belong to the category of HAPs are widely distributed not only in air, but also in water and soil environments, and has therefore undergone considerable scrutiny for the last three decades. In this article, environmental implications and management of HAPs in Korea will be reviewed, with a particular emphasis on the monitoring of HAPs in the ambient air. A number of field studies will be introduced, which were recently conducted in large urban and industrial areas. Based on the filed studies, eight pollutants have been suggested to be intensively managed as higher priority pollutants, which are benzene, 1,3-butadiene, formaldehyde, acrolein, trichloroethylene, benzo(a)pyrene, hexa-valent Cr, and $PM_{2.5}$. Finally, future directions for a mega scale project for comprehensive monitoring of ambient atmosphere in large urban areas will be suggested. Such an innovative project is believed to provide more realistic information on the nature of the population exposure, which can not be simply identified by emission inventories or source investigations. Therefore, any strategy for the management of HAPs should be developed by not only emission-based approaches, but also observation-based approaches.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.403-415
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• 1999

To properly assess air pollution levels, application of quality assurance and quality control(QA/QC) is believed to be an essential step. In order to cope with such scientific principle, a field study was designed with an aim of comparing: 1) the methods of calibration for airborne pollutants and 2) the protocols developed for their measurements. Measurements were made at Han Yang University, Seoul during 29 May through 1 June 1998 under the management of the Division of Measurements and Analysis(DMA) of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment(KOSAE). In this work, we report our results of intercomparative measurements on several gaseous criteria pollutants that were investigated mainly by the two institutes-Seoul National University(SNU) and the Korean Research Institute for Standards and Science(KRISS). Although measurements of major gaseous pollutants had been made routinely by many scientific institutes and organizations in Korea, most scientists involved in those studieswere obliged to do their experiments on the basis of their own procedural steps spaning from the preparation of gaseous standards to the methodological selections for the calibration. Hence, this campaign offered a unique opportunity to examine many important aspects on the measurements of these important gaseous pollutants. In the course of our study, we investigated the compatibility of data sets obtained by the two institutes in concert with reference data sets collected concurrently from a government-managed monitoring station. On the basis of our study, we conclude that different data sets made by different participants during this campaign agree well within the reasonable range of uncertainties.low, which indicated that during this period the potential acidity of precipitation was high but the neutralizing capacity was low. For Spring, pAi was very low but pH was slightly high. This was likely due to the large amount of $CaCO_3$ in the soil particles transported over a long range from the Chinese continent that were incorporated into the precipitation, and then neutralized the acidifying species with its high concentraton.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.237-244
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• 2001

The watershed information of the Mankyung River and Dongjin River is obtained and analysed using the GIS tool. The informations i.e., digital map, land use, point sources, weather station, water quality measurement station, and pollutants load unit are managed by DB system. The slope, rainfall, and generated pollutants loads of COD, TN and TP which are the input data of the rainfall-runoff-pollutants load model are estimated. From the analysis of the collected and generated data, the almost watershed area is composed of agricultural lands except the upstream regions. The population and industrial area are densely located in Cheonju City and Iksan City, whereas the farming areas are widely distributed.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.30 no.5 s.81
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• pp.481-486
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• 2004

Vehicle occupant exposure to air pollutants has been a subject of concern in recent years because of higher levels of air pollutants inside gasoline or diesel-using vehicle, comparing to the surrounding atmosphere. Contrary to previous studies, fuel of vehicles operated in this study was liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). This study examined the potential exposure and removal efficiency of selected volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen dioxide ($NO_2$) and respirable suspended particle (RSP) by commercial air cleaning device inside vehicle under different ventilation conditions. Vehicle concentrations inside of benzene, toluene, m,p-xylene, $NO_2$ and RSP were lower under the low ventilation condition. This was indicated that outdoor air pollutants could affect the vehicle air quality inside in case metropolitan cities such as Daegu. The urban vehicle concentrations inside of benzene, toluene, m,p-xylene, $NO_2$ and RSP with air cleaning device were higher than those without air cleaning device. This means that the use of air cleaning device equipped with activated carbon filter, which was used in this study, in the interior of vehicles could be expected to reduce the vehicle occupants exposure to air pollutants effectively. In batch type reactor of laboratory scale, removal efficiencies of air cleaning device used were $97.0\%,\;95.7\%,\;94.6\%\;and\;85.5\%$ respectively in benzene, toluene, m,p-xylene and $NO_2$.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.325-337
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• 2007

The effect of seawater and air pollutants on the three-story stone pagodas on Gameunsa Temple Site have been studied in order to establish conservation basic plan. Also, an experimental study has been conducted to evaluate the effect of seawater salt and air pollutants on the weathering of granite. The results could be summarized as follows. Because the three-story stone pagodas on Gameunsa Temple Site are located outdoors, the external appearance has been largely deteriorated due to natural and artificial factors such as typhoon, wind, microorganisms, moisture, extreme change in temperature, air pollutants, and seawater, etc. When G.J fresh granite was dipped into the seawater, dissolution rate of three minerals (Mg, Ca, and K) are increased linearly until about 40 days and then increased abruptly. After seawater dipping experiments, the mineral compositions of the granite surface were lower then that of the G.J fresh granite but Poisson's ratio and absorption ratio were slightly increased. Therefore, from these results we can say that stone cultural properties could be weathered by seawater and air pollutants and it's considered being a meaningful experiment to study the conservation method of stone cultural properties from seawater.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.47-57
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• 2013

Studies evaluating the health effects of hazardous air pollutants assume that people's exposure to typical pollutant level is the same as specific regional pollutant level. However, depending on social and demographic factors, time-activity pattern of people can vary widely. Since most people live in indoor environments over 88% of the day, evaluating exposure to hazardous air pollutants is hard to characterize. Objective of this study was to estimate the exposure levels of university students of $NO_2$, VOCs(BTEX) and $PM_{10}$ using the scenarios with time-activity pattern and indoor concentrations. Using data from time-use survey of National Statistical Office in 2009, we investigated time-activity pattern of university students and hourly major action. A total of 1,057 university students on weekday and 640 on weekend spent their times at indoor house 13.04 hr(54.32%), other indoors 7.70 hr(32.06%), and transportation 2.36 hr(9.83%). Indoor environments in which university students spent their times were mainly house and school. Air pollutants concentrations of other indoor environments except house and school such as bar, internet cafe and billiard hall were higher than outdoors, indicating that indoor to outdoor ratios were above 1. According to three types of exposure scenarios, exposure to air pollutants could be reduced by going home after school.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.249-256
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• 2013

For the purpose of recording polarization of the earth's atmosphere, the entire sky was photographed using the all-sky camera when the Sun was just above the horizon. The ratio and width of polarization were defined using the photograph, and a method to measure them was developed. Time-series photography of the polarization ratio and its width enabled us to qualitatively analyze the polarization phenomena which changes depending on the weather conditions. Findings indicated that polarization was co-related with air pollutants in a meaningful way. The polarization phenomena of the Earth's atmosphere are influenced by air pollutants. The more air pollutants exist in the air, the lower polarization ratio and the bigger polarization width it has. It is suggested that air pollutants disperses more photons, which makes it possible to observe the polarization phenomena in the vast area of the sky.