Conference announcement (Windsor,Ontario)

Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management Society

Conference announcement (Windsor, Ontario)     

Generic spatial classes for human health impacts, part II:

Within a Life Cycle Assessment of the fuel supply and the operation of cars fueled by natural gas, diesel and gasoline, the impacts of airborne pollutants on human health were assessed in a spatially differentiated way. Country average impacts were used for secondary sulfate and nitrate aerosols. The use of country average impacts also turned out to be sufficient for the primary pollutants emitted from most processes of the fuel supply. For emissions of primary pollutants from the vehicles and from some processes of the fuel supply, the low to moderate emission height and the high local population density in urban areas needed to be taken into account. In these cases, the method of generic spatial classes presented in Part I was applied. The spatially differentiated impacts were compared with the results of a generic impact assessment based on average European damage factors. The generic impact assessment overestimates the human health impact of the fuel supply by about a factor of 2, since many of the upstream processes take place in very sparsely populated countries, and underestimates the impact of the primary particles emitted by the diesel cars in large cities by about a factor of 2.     

Generic spatial classes for human health impacts, Part I:

A new method for the spatially differentiated assessment of impacts of airborne pollutants on human health is presented. It is applicable to primary pollutants with linear exposure response functions. This includes the most important primary air pollutants from transportation and energy generation. The article looks at the spatial differentiation of impacts due to emission height and the local population density distribution around the emission site, as has been predicted using a Gaussian plume model. The differentiation due to population density is captured by way of five generic spatial classes: large cities in agglomerations, highly densified districts in agglomerations, cities in urbanized regions, country average districts, and low density rural districts in rural regions. Average impacts are calculated for each class. The method is simple enough to be applied to a large number of emissions within Life Cycle Assessments. It was used to calculate site-dependent exposure efficiencies for a variety of primary pollutants emitted at different heights. For traffic emissions of pollutants with short atmospheric residence times, the exposure efficiencies vary by a factor of 5 across Germany and by a factor of 75 across Europe. This differentiation due to population density decreases significantly with an increasing atmospheric residence time of the pollutants and with an increasing emission height.     

Conference announcement (Blacksburg,Virginia)

Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management Society

Conference announcement (Blacksburg, Virginia)     

Analysis of chirality by femtosecond laser ionization mass spectrometry

Recent progress in the field of chirality analysis employing laser ionization mass spectrometry is reviewed. Emphasis is given to femtosecond (fs) laser ionization work from the author's group. We begin by reviewing fundamental aspects of determining circular dichroism (CD) in fs-laser ionization mass spectrometry (fs-LIMS) discussing an example from the literature (resonant fs-LIMS of 3-methylcyclopentanone). Second, we present new data indicating CD in non-resonant fs-LIMS of propylene oxide. Chirality 24:684-690, 2012. ? 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.