The modern era of tuberculosis began in the mid 1980s. At that time it was realised that tuberculosis had not only ceased to decline in many developed countries, notably the USA, but was actually increasing. This forced health services to look more closely at the problem of tuberculosis. It was realised that the disease was out of control across most of the poorest regions of the world, especially Central Africa and South Asia. It was for this reason that in 1993 the WHO took the unique step of declaring tuberculosis to be a world emergency.

A series of bioaerosol measurements have been conducted at two typical offices in Hong Kong for both a 4-day and a weekly period. Both the investigated offices were installed with heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HV AC) systems coupling with air handling units and fan coil units. Measurements were performed starting from early morning by the Anderson N6 impactor.

Air sample data were collected during asbestos abatement of two buildings using area and personal sampling methods. Abatement involved removal of pipe insulation from crawl spaces. The two sampling methods were compared to determine if there was a relationship between them. A relationship was observed between area and personal airborne samples in building 2 as determined by correlation and regression but is most likely due to chance. One major outlier was detected for both area and personal measurement sample data sets in building 2.

A large quantity of oily fumes is generated in fast food and Chinese restaurants from cooking oil kept at a high temperature in the kitchens. If these oily fumes are not properly abated, they can be a major source of organic emissions in some dense urban areas with a lot of restaurants such as found in Hong Kong. In the present study, the most commonly used cooking oil, peanut oil, was kept at 260°C in an environment typical of a commercial kitchen that consisted of a two-burner stir-frying cooking range, a single-tank electric fryer, a baffle-type grease extractor and an exhaust duct.

A simplified indoor air quality (IAQ) model has been applied to predict IAQ in an Australian house, using environmental chamber measurements of source strengths, house ventilation and room size. Total volatile organic compounds (TVOCs) was used as the model pollutant in this study. The validity of the IAQ model was initially assessed by comparing model predictions with measurements in the house over a period of time. The root mean square error between the measured and predicted values was 0.039. This model explains 57% of the potential for error.

A survey of the particle-size distribution of 17 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in indoor and outdoor air was performed in 20 homes in several Japanese cities. Highest PAH concentrations were found in the fine-particle fraction (smaller than 2.5 μm in diameter). The pro· portion of indoor PAH concentrations in fine particles was found to be higher than that of outdoors.