Eurocourses: Chemical and Environmental Science – serie

Based on the Lectures given during the Eurocourse on 'Practical Applications of Quantitative Structure-Activity (QSAR) in Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology' held at the Joint Research Centre Ispra, Italy, June 11--15, 1990

Interest in indoor air quality (IAQ) is growing at public, political and scientific levels. Complaints about poor IAQ, associated with acute symptoms such as mucous irritation, headaches and bad odour occur frequently, particularly in the office environment, where typical patterns of symptoms often occur, leading to the coining of the term "sick building syndrome". In the present book, the following issues are addressed: the dynamics of the indoor environment and strategies for indoor measurement; chemical and microbiological pollution, important species, sources and detection methods; effects of indoor pollution, in particular sensory irritation, including odour; airway,eye and skin irritation by organic pollutants and their assessment; immune effects, including allergic sensitization; chemical hyper-responsiveness; controlled human reactions to organic pollutants; building investigation, approaches and results; source characterization and control; criteria, norms and techniques in indoor air pollution, and regulatory aspects. The complex, multifactorial nature of sick building syndrome requires multidisciplinary collaboration from very diverse fields.It is evident that communication between researchers coming from different areas, all speaking their own language is a very difficult task. This book aims to present a solid foundation on the state of the art on sick buildings and how to cure them.

Interest in indoor air quality (IAQ) is growing at public, political and scientific levels. Complaints about poor IAQ, associated with acute symptoms such as mucous irritation, headaches and bad odor occur frequently, particularly in the office environment, where typical patterns of symptoms often occur, leading to the coining of the term 'Sick Building Syndrome'. In the present book, internationally known experts address the following issues: the dynamics of the indoor environment and strategies for indoor measurement chemical and microbiological pollution, important species, sources and detection methods effects of indoor pollution, in particular sensory irritation, including odor airway, eye and skin irritation by organic indoor pollutants and their assessment immune effects, including allergic sensitization chemical hyper-responsiveness controlled human reactions to organic pollutants building investigation: approaches and results source characterization and control criteria, norms and techniques in indoor air pollution, and regulatory aspects.The complex, multifactorial nature of sick building syndrome requires multidisciplinary collaboration from very diverse fields. It is evident that communication between researchers coming from very different areas, all speaking their own language, is a difficult task. This book, presenting as it does the state of the art on sick buildings and how to cure them, is a sound foundation on which to build for the future.

Aquatic systems play a salient role in the complex processes of energy and matter exchange between the geosphere and the atmosphere. Furthermore, the inextricable links between the water cycle, the geosphere and the atmosphere ensure that apparently localized environmental problems are increasingly seen to have impacts in other parts of the world. In order to identify local-to-global scale variables associated with environmental changes, one must concentrate on the recognition of processes, rather than placing a continued reliance on the monitoring of state variables. But in heterogeneous aquatic systems, small-scale aspects of a process under observation may not be summed directly to obtain regional estimates.The objectives of the Chemistry of Aquatic Systems: Local and Global Perspectives are: to illustrate how land, water and atmosphere are coupled by hydrogeochemical cycles and how these cycles affect the chemistry of natural waters; to strengthen our understanding of the cycling of nutrients, metals and organic carbon in marine and lacustrine systems; to give an account of current research and water technological applications of the processes occurring at the solid--water interface; to illustrate how pollutants are transformed, degraded and transported, and how to link processes occurring at different spatial and temporal scales. This is a tutorial book, written in such a way that the general principles are understood before progressing on to theoretical models, laboratory systems and real-world processes. For geochemists, water and soil scientists, environmental engineers, and students of these disciplines.

In many scientific branches, and especially the environmental sciences, the need for data treatment and evaluation is increasing continuously. Therefore, the interest and application range of multivariate analysis have expanded accordingly with a view of structuring, interpreting, and evaluating complex data bases. In this context, the present volume attempts to review the state-of-the-art in multivariate analysis and give an overview of the various fields of application in ecology, environmental chemistry, toxicology, risk analysis, and structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies. The first chapters of the book are focusing on fundamental aspects of multivariate analysis. The second part contains a number of case studies, with the application of basic methods such as principal component analysis, correspondence factor analysis, discriminant analysis, and neural networks. This book reflects and combines the lectures organized in June 1991 in the frame of the Eurocourse programme at JRC Ispra under the sponsorship of the Institute for the Environment.It was the intention of the course and the resulting publication to promote and stimulate the application of multivariate analysis in environmental sciences and related areas. F. Geiss Director Environment Institute JRC Ispra vii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS AND LECTURERS Auda Y.: Maison de 1'0rient Mediterraneen, CNRS, Universite Lyon 2, 7 rue Raulin, 69007 Lyon, France. Bacou A.M.: Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, CNRS, BP 5051, 34033 Montpellier CEDEX, France. Banco G.: Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, CNRS, BP 5051, 34033 Montpellier CEDEX, France. Barny M.H.: Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, IPSN, BP 6,92265 Fontenay-aux- Roses CEDEX, France.