‘Roving sentinels’ discover new air pollution sources – @theU

Innovative Approach to Air Quality Monitoring Reveals Pollution Hotspots

In 2019, University of Utah atmospheric scientists, the Environmental Defense Fund and other partners added a new tool to their quiver of air quality monitors—two Google Street View cars, Salt Lake Valley’s roving sentinels that would detect hyper-local air pollution hotspots. In the ensuing months John Lin, professor of atmospheric sciences at the U, developed a new modeling approach that used modeled wind-patterns and statistical analysis to trace pollution back to its source location to a scale previously missed by coarser scale monitoring projects that have traditionally characterized air quality averaged over an entire urban airshed.

Study Results

In a U- and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)-led study that published in the October 2023 issue of the journal Atmospheric Environment, the results are in.

“With mobile vehicles, you can literally send them anywhere that they could drive to map out pollution, including sources that are off the road that previous monitoring missed,” said Lin, who also serves as associate director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy. “I think the roving sentinel idea would be quite doable for a lot of cities.”

The researchers loaded the vehicles with air quality instrumentation and directed drivers to trawl through neighborhoods street by street, taking one air sample per second to create a massive dataset of air pollutant concentrations in the Salt Lake Valley from May 2019 to March 2020. The observations yielded the highest-resolution map yet of pollution hotspots at fine scales—the data captured variability within 200 meters, or about two football fields.

Implications for Air Quality

“The big takeaway is that there is a lot of spatial variability of air pollution from one end of a block to another. There can be big differences in what people are breathing, and that scale is not captured by the typical regulatory monitors and the policy that the U.S. EPA uses to control air pollution,” said Tammy Thompson, senior air quality scientist for EDF and co-author of the study.

Air quality patterns were as expected, with higher pollution around traffic and industrial areas. Pollutants were higher in neighborhoods with lower average incomes and a higher percentage of Black residents, confirming a well-known

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

• SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
• SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
• SDG 13: Climate Action
• SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

The article addresses air pollution and its impact on public health, environmental justice, urban planning, and the need for effective regulations and policies. These issues are connected to the SDGs mentioned above.

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

• SDG 3.9: By 2030, substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water, and soil pollution and contamination.
• SDG 11.6: By 2030, reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality and municipal and other waste management.
• SDG 13.1: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries.
• SDG 16.7: Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making at all levels.

These targets are relevant to the issues discussed in the article, such as reducing air pollution-related deaths and illnesses, improving air quality in cities, addressing climate-related hazards, and promoting inclusive decision-making processes.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

• Number of deaths and illnesses related to air pollution
• Air pollutant concentrations in specific areas
• Levels of nitrous oxides (NOx), black carbon (BC), fine particulate matter (PM2.5), and methane
• Variability of air pollution within neighborhoods
• Percentage of Black residents and average incomes in neighborhoods with high air pollution

These indicators can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets by assessing the impact of air pollution on public health, evaluating air quality in specific areas, and monitoring environmental justice issues.

Table: SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

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Source: attheu.utah.edu

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