Air Pollution Prevention Practice
Every time we look up in the sky we are looking through air, although we don’t see it, air consists of roughly 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and small amounts of miscellaneous gases and particles such as carbon dioxide, water vapour, argon and tiny suspended particles. The air however will change its composition from time to time, not keeping to the exact ratio of the concentrations. The Earth’s eco-system usually is able to correct these differences to achieve a balanced state, which maintains the stability of the atmosphere.
By definition air pollution refers to one or more pollutants being present in air. The amount, characteristics and period of time it is present will determine whether it is harmful to human, plants or animal’s wellbeing. It can easily disrupt a comfortable living environment like bad odours. Air pollutant source can generally be separated into natural cause (such as volcanic eruption, forest fire, etc.) and artificial cause (e.g. motor vehicle emission, industrial discharge). According to Air Pollution Prevention Act and its related Acts, air pollution are separated into four sub-categories, these are gaseous pollutant (sulphur oxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, hydrocarbon, chlorine gas, hydrogen, fluoride gas, chlorine hydrocarbon ,etc.), particulates (suspended particulates, smoke, acid mist, dustfall, etc), secondary pollutants (pollutants which have changed state through photochemical reaction in the air) and bad smelling pollutant (such as chlorine, hydrogen sulphide, methyl sulphide and methyl amide, etc).
Currently in Taiwan the air quality is published to the public as Pullutants Standard Index (PSI), this is a system used by the U.S. EPA to gauge the level of air pollution. In “Guideline for reporting of daily air quality-pollutant standards index” published by the U.S. EPA, the quality of air is divided into grades and it is graded using the PSI value. According to this guideline, air quality that falls between 101~200 PSI is classified as “unhealthy”. In order to monitor the air quality of this county, two continuous automatic control stations have been installed in Yilan and Dongshan. Of which the Yilan control station can monitor the level of SO2、CO、O3、PM10、NOX、NO、NO2、PM2.5、CO2; Dongshan station is able to monitor SO2、CO、O3、PM10、NOX、NO、NO2、THC、NMHC、CH4. In addition, this office also has nine manual control station primarily involved in the control of THC and dustfall.
The air pollution control service is divided into fugitive emission control (construction site, dust from road traffic, etc), mobile pollutant control (motor vehicle, boat, airplane or other transportation vehicle), stationary pollutant source control (such as factories, household fuel use, burning material outdoors…etc). This office aims to continuously improve the air quality, and continue to execute Yilan County’s air quality management and maintenance project”. By using this opportunity to analyze the air quality of the whole Yilan County, we expect to produce a plan to efficiently monitor and improve the air quality in Yilan County.
