Climate Change and U.S. Air Quality
Pollution from cars, trucks and coal-burning power plants—among other things—poses serious and growing health problems. With a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor Peter Adams plans to study the potential impact of global climate change and particulate matter on the air quality in the United States.
"Our new EPA-funded work will help us study and track dangerous neurotoxins like atmospheric mercury, and improve our understanding of the potentially more harmful particulate matter," said Adams, a member of Carnegie Mellon's Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies (CAPS).
Adams says he will build integrated models over the next three years to simulate air pollution from local to global scales. The work will build on earlier research that he has done alongside Spyros Pandis, a chemical engineering research professor at Carnegie Mellon. Pandis is a co-investigator on the grant.
Adams will also base his particulate matter models on findings by Carnegie Mellon CAPS researchers Allen Robinson and Neil Donahue, who recently published a paper in Science that revolutionized our understanding of major sources of organic particulate matter.
Fifty thousand Americans are thought to die prematurely each year as a result of particle exposure. Officials recently strengthened the federal standard after years of studies showed the previous standard—65 micrograms per cubic meter—was too loose.
As recently as May 2007, U.S. power companies announced intentions to build as many as 150 new generating plants fueled by coal, adding to the 645 units that produce about half the nation's electricity. But these coal-fired electric plants collectively account for 67 percent of all the sulfur dioxide emissions in the U.S., which is a major precursor of particulate matter.
"Our previous research showed that climate change will make photochemical smog pollution worse," said Adams. "This means we need to cut pollution emissions more than if there were no climate change. In our future research, we will see if the same is true for particulate matter and mercury."
Related Links: CAPS | Dept of Civil & Environmental Engineering | Dept of Chemical Engineering
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