Monitoring of airborne asbestos fibers in an urban ambient air of Shahryar City, Iran: levels, spatial distribution, seasonal variations, and health risk assessment

Occurrence, spatial distribution, seasonal variations, potential sources, and inhalation-based health risk assessment of organic/inorganic pollutants in ambient air of Tehran

“…The sampling was carried out for 8 h at a flow rate of 6 l/min and 3 m above the ground level. In the present study, phase contrast microscopy (PCM, Winooski, Vermont, USA) was used to determine the concentration of asbestos fibers via the NIOSH 7400 method (Taghizadeh et al 2019). Initially, the filters were placed on a glass slide and cleared by acetone vaporizer.…”

“…3d) also showed that the highest concentration was observed at station S4 followed by S8 and S2. There is a spinning and fiber production factory near station S4, where the high concentration of asbestos fibers at this station could be attributed to the plant's activities (Taghizadeh et al 2019). Stations S8 and S2 are also in a busy area with the sources of asbestos release into the atmosphere at these two points being vehicles and associated parts such as clutches, brake pads, washers, adhesives, and other parts .…”

“…Metals such as lead, cadmium, mercury, zinc, and chromium have been known as agents that are harmful for the human health, environment, and animals due to their stability in the environment (Wang et al 2019(Wang et al , 2018Zheng et al 2010;Karbasdehi et al 2016;Jafari et al 2018;Ghaffari et al 2017). The inhalation of asbestos fibers could also lead to some health outcomes such as asbestosis, pleural plaques, mesothelioma, and lung cancer (Taghizadeh et al 2019).…”

“…Thus, Tehran is one of the most polluted cities in the world. As such, it has been receiving much attention from the Iranian central government, scientific organizations and centers, the general population, as well as national and international environmental researchers (Amini et al 2017;Taghizadeh et al 2019;Mohammadiha et al 2018). Tehran has spatiotemporal traffic conditions with over 17 million trips and approximately 7 million kilometers of traffic per day.…”

Morphological and chemical analysis of tremolite related to natural asbestos in the road paving

“…It is therefore necessary to identify the presence of asbestos to avoid the risk of dispersion into the atmosphere of dangerous solid particles which can be inhaled by human and especially by road maintenance personnel in order to prevent exposure of the population to lung cancer caused by asbestos (Noonan and Pfau, 2010;Bourgault et al, 2014;Pfau and Noonan, 2019). The presence of asbestos in air and water has become a subject of health and environment concern (Mokhtari et al, 2019;Sąkol and Muszyńska-Graca, 2019;Taghizadeh et al, 2019). While the hazards of prolonged asbestos inhalation have been well established (Cox Jr, 2019;Nishimura et al, 2020), there does not yet appear to be clear answer concerning the toxicity of ingested asbestos (Fitzgerald and Rhodes, 2019;Zheng et al, 2019).…”