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ERE Seminar - Allen Robinson: "We Don't All Breath The Same Air"

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Event Details:

Allen L. Robinson

Carnegie Mellon University

Monday, April 18, 2022
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM

 

Room 104, Green Earth Sciences Building, 367 Panama Street, Stanford
Overflow Room - Room 014

Abstract

Air pollution levels in the US have decreased dramatically over the past several decades, yet racial-ethnic exposure disparities persist.  There is a need to better understand the underlying causes of these disparities in order to develop more effective policies to address them.  In the first part of this talk, I will discuss the causes of existing disparities in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations.  Combing data from mobile and fixed site monitoring, we have developed empirical exposure models for traffic and cooking primary PM2.5 concentrations at high spatial resolution for the continental US.  These models indicate that traffic and cooking activities explain about seventy percent of the exposure disparities to PM2.5 at the national level.  The large contribution of cooking was unexpected and highlights the need for potential new approaches to address long standing environmental inequities. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss the potential effects of adoption of new technologies on exposure disparities.  To do this we have developed a reduced complexity air quality model to efficiently predict primary PM2.5 concentrations at high spatial resolution across the entire continental US.  The model is designed to facilitate accounting for equity in environmental decision making.  To illustrate the application of the model, I will present a case study of the potential impacts of widespread vehicle electrification on environmental justice.

Allen Robinson Image 1

References


Liu, J., L. P. Clark, M. J. Bechle, A. Hajat, S.-Y. Kim, A. L. Robinson, L. Sheppard, A. A. Szpiro and J. D. Marshall (2021). "Disparities in Air Pollution Exposure in the United States by Race/Ethnicity and Income, 1990-2010." Environmental Health Perspectives 129(12): 127005.
 
Shah, R. U., E. S. Robinson, P. Gu, J. S. Apte, J. D. Marshall, A. L. Robinson and A. A. Presto (2020). "Socio-economic disparities in exposure to urban restaurant emissions are larger than for traffic." Environmental Research Letters 15(1

Bio

Dr. Allen L. Robinson is the Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University where he currently serves Director of the Carnegie Mellon University Africa campus in Kigali Rwanda and the Associate Dean of International Program – Africa in the College of Engineering.  He is the director of the EPA-supported Center for Air, Climate, and Energy Solutions (CACES); a multi-institutional research center focused on reducing the impact of emissions from energy systems and other sources on air quality, climate and human health.  He received his BS in Civil Engineering from Stanford University and his MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley.

 

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