English

In the poorer countries of the world, where energy consumption per capita is lower than in the industrialized nations, the process of rapid urbanization is a strong feature of the dynamic of economic development. Population growth rates in cities are consistently higher than in the countryside, due both to higher natural increases and to net migration. Although the majority ·of Asia's population is still rural, this dominance is expected to shift sometime around the tum of the century.

The purpose of the study is to evaluate the influence of an urban road tunnel in the atmosphere of contiguous working premises. Biological monitoring (COHb) on maintenance staff is added. Tunnel pollution levels are strongly correlated with the traffic intensity and influence the air quality of technical rooms in the same way as COHb concentration of employees.

Urban air quality makes headline news, and a recent Royal Commission report has stepped up the campaign against pollution from road vehicles. Better detection methods and monitoring mean that we are learning more about the air that we breathe.

In this paper, the conversion of exhaust heat to latent heat is studied as one of the methods for the preservation of the thermal environment in urban areas. A simulation model of exhaust heat management is composed and applied to the soot-and-smoke emitting facilities in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. The effectiveness is estimated by indices of "coefficient of exhaust heat management" and "conversion ratio of exhaust heat to latent heat".

The monitoring of air pollution and health levels was carried out in coal burning districts and the districts with central heating in Chengde City. The air pollution levels in winter and summer were compared in coal burning districts and the districts with central heating, indoors and outdoors, in kitchens and bedrooms, before and after the central heating system was used. The health levels of residents who lived in coal burning districts and in the districts with central heating were compared.

Household coal burning is one of the major sources of total suspended particulate matter (TSP) in African urban residential areas in South Africa. The coal stoves used are usually poorly vented or unvented, consequently resulting in high levels of indoor air pollution. The effects of household fuels used in two Townships in the Vaal Triangle (central South Africa) on the health of 8-12 year old children living in these households, were investigated.

Forty years ago, smoke and sulphur dioxide pollution from domestic coal burning caused an air pollution episode that led to the premature deaths of 4,000 Londoners. These so-called smogs have been all but eliminated by a combination of measures of which the most important were the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968, the move away from domestic coal burning for home heating and the centralisation of electricity generation in large power stations away from towns and cities. Largely because of pollution emissions from motor traffic, urban air quality is once more causing public concern.