• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.235-244
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• 2019

This study examined the neurotoxicity of aluminum sulfate (AS), an environmental pollutant, and the protective effect of Phrymaleptostachya var. asiatica HARA (PLVAH) extract on the neurotoxicity induced by AS in the cultured C6 glioma cells. For this study, the cell viability and antioxidative effects, such as electron donating (ED) activity, lipid peroxidation (LP) activity, and superoxide anion-radical (SAR) scavenging activity, were analyzed. AS decreased the cell viability significantly in a dose-dependent manner and the $XTT_{50}$ value was measured at $120.0{\mu}M$ of AS. The neurotoxicity of AS was determined to be mid-toxic by Borenfreund and Puerner's toxic criteria. In addition, the catalase (CAT), antioxidant enzyme remarkably increased the cell viability injured by AS-induced neurotoxicity in these cultures. Regarding the protective effect of the PLVAH extract on AS-induced neurotoxicity, PLVAH extract significantly increased the ED ability, and the inhibitory ability of the LP and SAR scavenging ability. These findings suggest that oxidative stress is involved in the cytotoxicity of AS, and the PLVAH extract effectively protected against AS-induced neurotoxicity by its antioxidative effects. Natural resources, such as the PLVAH extract may be a putative therapeutic agent for the treatment of the toxicity induced by heavy metallic compounds, such as AS correlated with the oxidative stress.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.35-43
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• 2021

The application of nature-based solutions, such as low impact development (LID) techniques and green infrastructures, for stormwater management continue to increase in urban areas. Plants are usually utilized in LID facilities to improve their pollutant removal efficiency through phytoremediation. Plants can also reduce maintenance costs and frequency by means of reducing the accumulation of pollutants inside the facility. Plants have long been used in different LID facilities; however, proper plant-selection should be considered since different species tend to exhibit varying pollutant uptake capabilities. This study was conducted to investigate the pollutant uptake capabilities of plants by comparing the dry matter and nutrient contents of different plant species in roadsides, LID facilities, and landscape areas. The dry matter content of the seven herbaceous plants, shrubs, and arboreal trees ranged from 60% to 90%. In terms of nutrient content, the total nitrogen (TN) concentration in the tissues of herbaceous plants continued to increase until the summer season, but gradually decreased in the succeeding periods. TN concentrations in shrubs and trees were observed to be high from early spring up to the late summer seasons. All plant samples collected from the LID facility exhibited high TP content, indicating that the vegetative components of LID systems are efficient in removing phosphorus. Overall, the nutrient content of different plant species was found to be highly influenced by the urban environment which affected the stormwater runoff quality. The results of this study can be beneficial for establishing plant selection criteria for LID facilities.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.699-712
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• 2000

Juam lake is a major water resource for the industrial and agricultural activities as well as the resident life of Kwangju and Chonnam regions. However, the water quality of the lake is getting worse due to a large quantity of pollutant inflowing to the lake. Thus, the strategy for achieving the water quality goal of the lake should be developed as soon as possible. When there are various alternatives that can be used as the strategy, several criteria based on the achievement degree of water quality goal, the applicability of technique and social environment, and the reasonableness of the cost required are made to evaluate and rank the alternatives. However, it is difficult to make a decision when there are multiple criteria and conflicting objectives and specifically the estimated values of criteria contain elements of uncertainty. The uncertainty stems from the lack of available information, the randomness of future situation, and the incomplete knowledge of expert. As the degree of uncertainty is higher, the decision becomes more difficult. In this study, a fuzzy decision-making method is presented to assist decision makers in evaluating various alternatives under uncertainty. The method allows decision makers to characterize the associated uncertainty by applying fuzzy theory and incorporate the uncertainty directly into the decision making process for selecting the "best" alternative so decisions can be made that are more appropriate and realistic than those made without taking uncertainty in account.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.87-97
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• 2004

NMHC (non-methane hydrocarbons) and fine particles such as P $M_{10}$ and P $M_{2.5}$ were measured at KIST (Korea Institute of Science and Technology) in Seoul for a month from the end of May. At the beginning of June, peak ozones exceeded 100ppb both near KIST and in Seoul while ozone and fine particles decreased from the middle of June due to frequent precipitation. Because the measurement site was close to trees on a hill, isoprene concentration went up to 4.1ppb with an average of 0.76ppb. Toluene was the highest all day long, but particularly high concentration in the afternoon implied a contribution of emission from solvent use as well as vehicle exhaust. Eighty-five percent of P $M_{10}$ was P $M_{2.5}$ on an average since major ions except sea salt, including nitrate, were present within P $M_{2.5}$. Daily variations of pollutants were generally similar except for NMHC. One of major differences in NMHC variation was maintenance of a relative high concentration in rainy day, showing that NMHC were not effectively scavenged by precipitation.ion.ion.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.8-18
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• 2015

Pollutants such as heavy metals and explosives originating from the military operational ranges can be migrated to adjacent surface water body or offsite soil, and can affect to local residents and aquatic ecosystem. Therefore, Korea Ministry of the National Defense has established various guidelines for environmental management including the installation of pollutant migration prevention facilities (PMPFs) and monitoring methodologies for heavy metals in the operational range soil and effluent and sediment of PMPFs. However, current guidelines neither address the explosive compounds such as 2, 4, 6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) and hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) nor suggest detailed environmental investigation protocol. This paper introduces the new “Environmental Management Manual for Military Firing Ranges”, which includes the environmental criteria for explosives as well as the detailed investigation protocol for the affected environmental media including soil, effluent and sediment of PMPFs.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.288-294
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• 1993

Flue gas control systems for small-scale combustors must be designed to provide highly effective removal of three criteria pollutants (S $O_{2}$, N $O_{x}$ and particulate matter), and must be safe, reliable and small. These requirements make dry, regenerative clean-up process particularly attractive and this paper describes a new concept for integrated pollutant control : a filter comprised of layered, gas permeable membranes that act as an S $O_{2}$ sorbant, a N $O_{x}$ reduction catalyst and a particulate filter. A mixed metal oxide sorbent, Cu-Ce was used as a sorbent/catalyst and the activity was compared with Cu-7Al. The S $O_{2}$ removal eficiency of Cu-Ce was increased with temperature increase up to 500$^{\circ}$C and the catalytic activity for NO was higher than that of Cu-7Al. By the sulfation of Cu-Ce, the reduction activity was increased at the temperature higher than 350$^{\circ}$C. The regeneration of Cu-Ce was very fast and some amount of elemental sulfar was found.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.207-215
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• 1993

In order to statistically predict $O_3$ levels in Seoul, the study used the TMS (telemeted air monitoring system) data from the Department of Environment, which have monitored at 20 sites in 1989 and 1990. Each data in each site was characterized by 6 major criteria pollutants ($SO_2, TSP, CO, NO_2, THC, and O_3$) and 2 meteorological parameters, such as wind speed and wind direction. To select proper variables and to determine each pollutant's behavior, univariate statistical analyses were extensively studied in the beginning, and then various applied statistical techniques like cluster analysis, regression analysis, and expert system have been intensively examined. For the initial study of high level $O_3$ prediction, the raw data set in each site was separated into 2 group based on 60 ppb $O_3$ level. A hierarchical cluster analysis was applied to classify the group based on 60 ppb $O_3$ into small calsses. Each class in each site has its own pattern. Next, multiple regression for each class was repeatedly applied to determine an $O_3$ prediction submodel and to determine outliers in each class based on a certain level of standardized redisual. Thus, a prediction submodel for each homogeneous class could be obtained. The study was extended to model $O_3$ prediction for both on-time basis and 1-hr after basis. Finally, an expect system was used to build a unified classification rule based on examples of the homogenous classes for all of sites. Thus, a concept of high level $O_3$ prediction model was developed for one of $O_3$ alert systems.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.63-69
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• 1999

To offer a general guideline for the quantitative analysis of airborne pollutants, we designed and conducted a comprehensive QA/QC test using two different strategic approaches, namely (1) field-based comparative measurement and (2) laboratory-based comparative analysis. The former task was performed to make meaningful comparison of combined errors occurring from both sampling and analytical techniques in the measurements of such components as: (1) criteria pollutants, (2) volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and (3) particulate matters with the associated metals and ions. The latter task was also conducted to compare various types of bias arising mainly from the laboratory analytical procedures of (1) gaseous standards of VOCs and (2) of aqueous standards of metals and ions. The concentration data derived from each of these two different types of major tasks were evaluated per chemical species categorized as above. While the very details of these studies are to be reported on an individual basis according to the above classification of the project, this paper is presented to provide an overview of the whole project - its aim and direction.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.359-366
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• 2008

The series of experiments under the various conditions were carried out to evaluate the feasibility of dissolved air flotation (DAF) as an alternative of conventional gravity sedimentation (CGS) and to investigate the decrease of the loadings following to biological wastewater treatment processes in livestock wastewater system. On the basis of the experiment result between CGS and DAF processes, for the other water quality criteria as well as suspended solid the removal efficiency of DAF process was about 20~25 % better than CGS process on average. In addition, the particle removal efficiency of DAF process became higher in proportion as the increase of air to solid (A/S) ratio and the general wastewater treatment efficiency of DAF process was enough to meet the requirement of loading decrease to following biological process even at low A/S ratio range. Though DAF process is widely known as an solid separation unit, there was not the notable relationship between particle separation efficiency and several pollutant removal efficiencies like $COD_{Cr}$ and nutrients (T-N, T-P). Assume that the $COD_{Cr}$ was removed as the fraction of particle separation in this experiment, the removal efficiency of T-N and T-P were sensitive to removal efficiency of $COD_{Cr}$, especially.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.185-190
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• 1995

Recently, because of the worse of the air pollution, the excessive airtught of building and the inferiority of air conditioning system, the development of high efficiency air purification technology was enlarged to the environmental improvement of an indoor or a harmful working condition. The air purification technology has used chemical filters or charcoal filters or charcoal to remove hazardouse gaseous pollutants (SO$_{x}$, NO$_{x}$, NH$_{3}$, etc.) by air pollutant control technology, but they have many problems of high pressure loss, short life, wide space possession, and treatment of secondary wastes. For these reason, the object of reasearch shall be hazardous gaseous pollutants removal by the surface discharge induced plasma chemical process that is A.C. discharge of multistreams applied A.C. voltage and frequency between plane induced eletrode and line discharge eletrode of tungsten, platinum or titanium with a high purified alumina sheet having a film-like plane. As a result, the control performance for hazardous gaseous pollutants showed very high efficiency in the normal temperature and pressure. Also, after comtact oxidation decomposition of harmful gaseous pollutants, the remainded ozone concentration was found much lower than that of ACGIH or air pollution criteria in Korea.rea.