Professional Custom Accounting Papers: Engineering for Indoor Air Quality,
To date, we have discussed air pollution as being sourced either from natural or anthropogenic forces. In our reading for this unit, your authors thoroughly explain the health effects of air pollution and tie together air pollution and noise pollution in a rather unique manner. This strategy of tying together noise pollution and air pollution warrants further consideration than what is presented in our reading.
One of the interesting points that you may note as you progress through this program is that much of what is considered a pollutant to humans is actually already present in nature. This includes some of what is mentioned in our reading in this unit: aerosols (ocean spray), hydrocarbons (petroleum), oxides of nitrogen (tropical forests), ozone (elevated atmospheres), and heavy metals (lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, etc.) (Godish, Davis, & Fu, 2015; Phalen & Phalen, 2013). A question could then be posed as to why or how natural phenomenon, energy sources, tropospheric nitrogen compounds, and naturally occurring elements are labeled environmental pollutants when in the presence of ecological or human life. This is an important consideration, given that most of the time we may consider only engineering ambient air quality back to levels found in “climax” nature.
The answer to the question may be found with a closer consideration to how humans interact within the environment. This includes anthropogenic acts such as exposing elemental sulfur through mining operations to rainfall events, thereby allowing an unmitigated exposure of the sulfur to water and creating sulfuric acid (H2SO4) (Hill & Feigl, 1987). Another example might be over-stocking cattle in a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO), thereby allowing an unmitigated concentration of methane gas into the immediate
UNIT IV STUDY GUIDE Engineering for Indoor Air Quality, Part Two
