Burning joss paper and incense is a significant Taoist ceremonial practice in Asian countries such as Taiwan and China. The burning of joss paper has been demonstrated to significantly create particulate matters (PM) and to cause air pollution problems. PM in the atmosphere is among the primary air pollutants, and their sources are factories, vehicles, construction fields, combustion, vehicle exhaust dust, and aerosols derived from photochemical reactions. Numerous sources of environmental PM exist. Thus, the ability to rapidly determine the particulate type and source to adjust the controls and develop policies is an important issue for air quality management. This dissertation consists of two parts on the particulate emission control and characteristic identification. In the first part, we study investigates feasible options of air pollution control devices (APCD) for joss paper furnaces in temples, and used a 40 kg/hr joss paper furnace for testing. This paper examined particulate removal efficiencies of two options: a bag house (capacity 30 m3/min at 108 ¢J) and a wet scrubber (capacity 40 m3/min at 150 ¢J). The results indicate that PM in the diluted flue gas at the bag-house inlet were 76.6 ¡Ó 32.7 mg/Nm3 (average ¡Ó standard deviation), and those at the outlet of the bag-house could be reduced to as low as 0.55 ¡Ó 1.28 mg/Nm3. An average PM removal efficiency of 99.3 % could be obtained with a filtration speed of approximately 2.0 m/min evaluated at 108 ¢J. The wet scrubber removed approximately 70 % of PM, with scrubbing intensities higher than 4.0 L/m2.s across the scrubber cross-section. For the duration of the experiment, no visual white smoke (water mist) was observed at the exit of the wet scrubber with a combustion rate of 16 kg/hr of joss paper, and the scrubbing water temperature was automatically sustained at lower than 61 ¢J. The study concluded that both bag filtration and wet scrubbing are suitable techniques to control particulate emission from joss paper furnaces in Taiwanese temples. The bag filtration technique, while achieving higher efficiencies than the wet scrubbing technique, requires more space and cost. Examinations of bottom and fly ashes of combusted joss paper with X-ray diffraction (XRD) revealed the presence of calcium oxide in the fly ash, while certain metals were found in the bottom ash. The second part aimed at the investigates surface characteristics of airborne PM sampled from air pollution control devices of a number of industrial operations. The PM sources selected for this study comprise the following operations or processes: a coke oven, iron ore sintering furnace, blast furnace, and basic oxygen furnace from an integrated steelmaking plant; electric arc furnaces of two secondary steelmaking plants; a municipal solids waste incinerator; two oil-fired boilers; and a coal-fired power plant boiler. The collected PM samples were analyzed using a scanning electronic microscope (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscope (EDS) to determine their chemical composition and surface characteristics. Results for each PM sample regarding size, surface characteristics, and chemical compositions can be used to trace the related emission industrial sources.