With increase in population and enormous development of industry and commerce in Taichung City, air pollution caused by catering, religious activities, agricultural waste burning, and how to improve indoor air quality (IAQ) have become a major public concern. This project includes inspections of catering industry cooking emission control, promoting concentrated burning and source reduction of joss paper, inspections of open field burning of agricultural residues and inspections of IAQ control. In the aspect of “catering industry cooking emission control”, this project enhanced the inspections of air pollution control equipment in catering industries which had most complaint rates, conducted joint investigations with relevant government departments, successfully impelled vendors to install or to improve air pollution control equipment. For large-scale catering industries, this project conducted on-site measurements and provided suggestions to raise vendors’ awareness of air pollution control and to improve oil fume emission problems effectively. In the aspect of “promoting concentrated burning and source reduction of joss paper”, this project held incinerator cleaning ceremonies during the Chinese New Year, Tomb-Sweeping Festival and Ghost Festival to eliminate the concept of being disrespectful for sending joss paper into incinerator. Meanwhile, this project collaborated with 4 major convenience store brands in Taiwan in building “merit substitutes for joss paper” service and extended this service to public nationwide by holding an inter-County/City promoting conference. This project conducted surveys of temples in Taichung City to understand the environmental strategies of these temples and also visited local apartment communities to publicize the concept of concentrated burning and source reduction of joss paper and maintain the air quality of places of worship and residential complexes. In the aspect of “open field burning of agricultural residues control”, this project created an online hotspot map of open field burning by collecting annual hotspots data as a reference for relevant government departments. During the harvest seasons of first and second cultivations, this project dissuaded farmers from burning agricultural waste through publicity and notified them of measures and regulations of reuse of agricultural residues which were enacted by relevant agriculture departments. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were set out to patrol agricultural area in Taichung City as a mean to reduce air pollution problems caused by burning straws. With the innovation of combining webcams and air quality sensors, deeper monitoring of open field burning of agricultural residues and air quality changes can be achieved. In the aspect of “IAQ (indoor air quality) control”, this project conducted inspections of IAQ management of major public places in Taichung City. For public places that had assigned exclusive personnel and had established IAQ maintenance systems, this project inspected the implementation their plan of IAQ management and built a database for organizing and analyzing. For public places that needed IAQ counseling, experts in IAQ management were invited to conduct on-site inspections and offer advice. In conclusion, the results at present stage show the reductions of air pollutants:34.08 tons of PM10; 19.04 tons of NOx; 30.42 tons of PM2.5;3.71 tons of NMHC; 10.92 tons of SOx. Still, this project will continue to improve air quality of Taichung City and contribute our future work to maintaining citizen’s living environment.

Catering smoke pollution control, Centralized joss paper incineration, Open burning, Indoor air quality