• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.49 no.5
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• pp.440-448
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• 2016

Nonpoint sources of pollution (NPS) is defined as diffuse discharges of pollutants (e.g., nutrient, pesticide, sediment, and enteric microorganism) throughout the natural environment and they are associated with a variety of farming practices. Previous studies found that water soluble anionic polyacrylamide (PAM) is one of the highly effective measures for enhancing infiltration, reducing runoff, preventing erosion, controlling nonpoint source of pollutants, and eventually protecting soil and water environment. Potential benefits of PAM treatment in agricultural soil and water environments have been revealed by many research and they include low cost, easy and quick application, and suitability for use with other Best Management Practices (BMPs) for NPS control. This study reviews the various applications of PAM and discusses its further potentials in agricultural environment.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.64 no.1
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• pp.1-4
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• 2021

Ambient air pollution, in particular, particulate matter (PM) pollution imposes serious health concerns such as hospitalization and premature deaths, worldwide. While commercial breathing masks are in use for protection against this hazardous issue, yet their efficiency in filtering PM was not up to the par, besides several other discomforts such as poor breathability due to reduced air flow, sweat production etc. In this study, commercial face mask coated with β-glucan, a high molecular weight polymer is tested for its efficacy in filtering PM. Quantification of PM before and after filtration and microscopic observation (using scanning electron microscopy (SEM)) of the fabric used in filtering the dust pollutants (generated from wood chips and cigarette) showed that β-glucan coated fabric were significantly efficient in capturing PM (size of 10 and 2.5 ㎛ in diameter) than that of the untreated control fabric, wherein the former had filtration efficacy with fold increase of 11.6 and 2.6 towards capturing PM2.5 and PM10 respectively than the latter. Thus, β-glucan coated fabric was found to be effective in filtering PM.

• Journal of Surface Science and Engineering
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.209-214
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• 2021

As coffee consumption per person increases annually to 323 cups in 2018, treating the spent coffee ground has arisen because spent coffee ground results in soil and air pollution. The demands of air purification filters are increasing more and more because the air pollution due to the fine dust has become worse. The spent coffee grounds had a porous structure, however, the pore was blocked by organic oil compounds. Electrocoagulation, which is one of the electrochemical methods, has the potential to remove the organic compounds. The surface area of spent coffee grounds increased effectively after the electrocoagulation treatment, and surface morphology and surface area were confirmed using SEM and BET, respectively. Using the FT-IR, both the spent coffee grounds and the electrocoagulated spent coffee grounds were characterized. The filter characteristics were examined by the adsorption test using formaldehyde, one of the air pollutants.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.563-574
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• 2007

There seems to be a consensus among most people that visibility impairment is the most obvious indicator of air pollution. While considerable evidence on the association between air pollution and health outcomes including death and disease have been established, based on industrial complex areas or huge urban cities, time-series, case-crossover and cohort studies, scarce literature exists on the direct evidence for the association between visibility and adverse health outcomes. Our study is assessed the effect of air pollution measured by visibility impairment on respiratory mortality over a period of six years. Relative risks in respiratory deaths were estimated by a Poisson regression model of daily deaths between $1999{\sim}2004$. Daily counts of respiratory deaths as dependent variable was modelled with daily 24-hr mean visibility measurements (kilometers) as independent variable by means of Poisson regression. This model is controlled for confounding factors such as day of weeks, weather variables, seasonal variables and $PM_{10}$. The results in this study is observed the statistically significant association between an inverse health effect and visibility during the study period for respiratory mortality (percentage change in the relative risk for all aged -0.57%, 95% Cl, $-1.01%{\sim}-0.12%$; for $0{\sim}15$ aged -7.12%, 95% Cl, $-13.29%{\sim}-0.51%$; for 65+ aged -0.43%, 95% Cl, $-0.93%{\sim}-0.06%$ per 1 km increased in visibility). The effect size was much reduced during warm season. Visibility impairment resulting from air pollution is strongly associated with respiratory mortality, especially for children may be spent at outdoor. Our result provides a quick and useful indicator for eliciting the contribution of air pollution to the excess risk of respiratory mortality in Seoul, Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.68-81
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• 2023

This study aims to establish a scenario based on the spacing and arrangement of the roadside trees to reduce heat waves and fine dust in cities that occurred during the urbanization process and to quantitatively analyze the degree of reduction. The ENVI-met 5.0.2v model, a micro-climate simulation program, was used to analyze the degree of improvement in the thermal environment and fine dust according to the roadside tree scenario. As a result of temperature analysis according to street tree spacing, the narrower the distance between roadside trees, the lower the temperature during the day as the number of planted trees increased, and a similar pattern was shown regardless of the distance between roadside trees in the morning and evening. In the case of fine dust emitted from the road, the concentration of fine dust increased slightly due to the increase in roadside trees, but the concentration of sidewalks where people walk increased slightly or there was no difference because of blocking fine dust on trees. The temperature according to the arrangement of street trees tended to decrease as the number of planted trees increased as the arrangement increased. However, not only the amount of trees but also the crown projected area was judged to have a significant impact on the temperature reduction because the temperature reduction was greater in the scenario of planting the same amount of trees and widening the interval of arrangement. In terms of the arrangement, the fine dust concentration showed a difference from the results according to the interval, suggesting that the fine dust concentration may change depending on the relationship between the main wind direction and the tree planting direction. By quantitatively analyzing the degree of thermal environment and fine dust improvement caused by roadside trees, this study is expected to promote policies and projects to improve the roadside environment efficiently, such as a basic plan for roadside trees and a project for wind corridor forests.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.495-505
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• 2006

In order to classify aerosol type, Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) and Fine mode Fraction (FF), which is the optical thickness ratio of small particles$(<1{\mu}m)$ to total particles, data from MODIS (MODerate Imaging Spectraradiometer) aerosol products were analyzed over North-East Asia during one year period of 2005. A study area was in the ocean region of $20^{\circ}N\sim50^{\circ}N$ and $110^{\circ}E\simt50^{\circ}E$. Three main atmospheric aerosols such as dust, sea-salt, and pollution can be classified by using the relationship between AOT and FF. Dust aerosol has frequently observed over the study area with relatively high aerosol loading (AOT>0.3) of large particles (FF<0.65) and its contribution to total AOT in spring was up to 24.0%. Pollution aerosol, which is originated from anthropogenic sources as well as a natural process like biomass burning, has observed in the regime of high FF (>0.65) with wide AOT variation. Average pollution AOT was $0.31{\pm}0.05$ and its contribution to total AOT was 79.8% in summer. Characteristic of sea-salt aerosol was identified with low AOT (<0.3), almost below 0.1, and slightly higher FF than dust and lower FF than pollution. Seasonal analysis results show that maximum AOT $(0.33{\pm}0.11)$ with FF $(0.66{\pm}0.21)$ in spring and minimum AOT $(0.19{\pm}0.05)$, FF $(0.60{\pm}0.14)$ in fall were observed in the study area. Spatial characteristic was that AOT increasing trend is observed as closing to the eastern part of China due to transport of aerosols from China by the prevailing westerlies.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.40 no.3 s.184
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• pp.263-275
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to show the pollution characteristics of hazardous elements from roadside dust in the Gwangju city. We collected 47 samples from November to December in 2004 and separated four groups such as residential area, industrialized area, downtown area and heavy traffic area fer characteristics comparison on hazardous elements. Roadside dust mostly consisted of quartz, albite, microcline, muscovite in XRD analysis. Content of hazardous elements varied: As $3.4{\sim}11.9 ppm$, Cd $0.2{\sim}28.2 ppm$, Co $32{\sim}526 ppm$, Cr $25{\sim}526 ppm$, Cu $11{\sim}375 ppm$, Ni $14{\sim}247 ppm$, Pb $13{\sim}413 ppm$ and Zn $101{\sim}972 ppm$. Average contents of hazardous elements of Zn>Cu>Pb>Cr>Co>Ni>Cd. Content of hazardous elements was low in residential area, whereas that of heavy metal was much the same in both in heavy traffic area. Content of hazardous elements such as Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn was found to be particularly high in industrialized area. According to these results it was possible to presume that industrialized area was affected by industry activity such as machinery, petrochemical, automobile and electronics industry. The SEM analysis, detected Pb, Cr, Ni, and Fe particles in samples of industrialized area contaminated by industry activity. The correlation coefficient table resulted from the samples of roadside dust showed that there was same direction increase of content between elements. In other words, when the content of Cd increase, Cr and Ni increase, as Cr increase, Cu and Ni increase, as Cu increase Ni increase and Pb increase Zn increase. Based on these results it was possible to predict and interpret similar contamination patterns in this study.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.215-224
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• 2004

We report the high concentration episodes for PM$_{10}$, SO$_2$, NO$_2$, and $O_3$ in many urban areas Korea during 2002. The high concentration episodes are identified based on the National Ambient Air Quality Standards and the observations obtained from the Regional Air Monitoring Network composed of approximately 160 air pollution monitoring stations located in a number of major or big cities in South Korea including Seoul, Pusan, Daegu, and Incheon cities. The results show that the twenty cases of high concentration episodes in 2002 consists of both ozone warning episodes (6 cases) and high PM$_{10}$ concentration cases (14 cases), and one half of the latter are found to occur in association with the Yellow Sand (Asian Dust) phenomena. The most outstanding characteristics of the reported episodes are the excessively high levels of maximum PM$_{10}$ concentrations during the Yellow Sand period (i.e., exceeding 3,000$\mu\textrm{g}$/㎥ in April, 2002) and their variable occurrence frequencies across seasons. The high ozone concentration episode days are mainly resulting from both the high photochemical reactions and poor ventilations. The high PM$_{10}$ concentration days during non Yellow Sand periods, however, mostly occurred under the influence of synoptic meteorological conditions such as stagnant or slowly passing high pressure centers, and consequently prevailing weak wind speeds over the Korean peninsula. The overall results of our study thus suggest the importance of both synoptic and local meteorological factors for high concentration levels in the major and/or big cities in Korea.n Korea.

• Spatial Information Research
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.201-213
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• 2002

Chemical analyzes were carried out the samples from roadsides of the Gwangju city. The purpose of this research is to investigate the concentrations and distribution patterns of heavy metals due to urbanization and industrialization in the Gwangju city This study area is not significantly contaminated based on the concentrations of Cd, Cu, Fe, Mn, Pb and Zn. However, the concentrations of the chemical elements analyzed are locally higher than those of serious contamination level indicated by Ministry of environment. The dust pH is in the rage of 5.60-7.09 and was generally neutral, and there are no difference in pollution area and nonpollution area. Chemical analyses utilized are dilution by 0.1N HCl. In result of analysis by the method using 0.1N HCl, concentrations of Cd and Cu are a little high in Gwangchondong of Seo-Gu. Concentrations of Mn and Pb are a little high in Buk-Gu and Nam-gu, and Concentrations of Zn are generally higher than average of soils. Zn, in the study area, keeps polluting greatly as Zn concentration of average is 150.9ppm. All of P.I values are lower than 1, it means heavy metal pollution is not serious.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.305-313
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• 2017

Accumulating epidemiological evidence indicates that exposure to fine air pollution particles (APPs) is associated with a variety of adverse health effects. However, the exact physiochemical properties and biological toxicities of fine APPs are still not well characterized. We collected four types of fine particle (FP) (diesel exhaust particles [DEPs], natural organic combustion [NOC] ash, synthetic organic combustion [SOC] ash, and yellow sand dust [YSD]) and investigated their physicochemical properties and in vitro biological toxicity. DEPs were almost entirely composed of ultrafine particles (UFPs), while the NOC, SOC, and YSD particles were a mixture of UFPs and FPs. The main elements in the DEPs, NOC ash, SOC ash, and YSD were black carbon, silicon, black carbon, and silicon, respectively. DEPs exhibited dose-dependent mutagenicity even at a low dose in Salmonella typhimurium TA 98 and 100 strains in an Ames test for genotoxicity. However, NOC, SOC, and YSD particles did not show any mutagenicity at high doses. The neutral red uptake assay to test cell viability revealed that DEPs showed dose-dependent potent cytotoxicity even at a low concentration. The toxicity of DEPs was relatively higher than that of NOC, SOC, and YSD particles. Therefore, these results indicate that among the four FPs, DEPs showed the highest in vitro biological toxicity. Additional comprehensive research studies such as chemical analysis and in vivo acute and chronic inhalation toxicity tests are necessary to determine and clarify the effects of this air contaminant on human health.