The Air Quality Monitoring Team (AQMT) at UC Davis has operated the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) ambient speciated particulate monitoring network since its inception in 1988. Beginning in 2015, AQMT took on the laboratory analysis and data handling for the Chemical Speciation Network (CSN). These two networks encompass over 300 sites delivering over 60 PM2.5 species across the country every third day.

by Andy Fell | Oct 11, 2021 | Environment, Features, The Big Question

Air Quality Research Center's, Sean Raffuse has been working on a team at NASA developing smoke and fire models. A recently published article quoted below shares his work over the past few years.  

Year after year California has seen some of the largest and most deadly wildfires, not only by acreage burned, but by also by hazardous air quality. The smoke has turned some cities in neighboring state’s air quality into the dirties in the world, including outside of the state.

Roy Harrison, a researcher and professor at the University of Birmingham, UK, recently conducted a study to review the reductions in PM 2.5 and NO2 levels that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns over 11 cities. Harrison applied machine learning techniques to remove the effects of weather on the gaseous concentrations to see how the air quality had truly changed due to the lockdowns. 

Low-cost air quality sensors are becoming more accurate and affordable to the general public month by month. There is a grand amount of research occurring in the field so air quality sensors. Government, private industry, non-profits and community scientists are all concerned about the air pollution around the world.

A recent study by the University of Leeds and the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen divulged PM2.5 had only a small reduction across China and it was not lowered at all in Northeast China. The PM2.5 reduction of 11% across China was disappointing in comparison to the reduction 27% of NO2 across China.  

What is Air Pollution? What is the evidence linking air pollution to adverse effects on the brain? How does air pollution alter brain development and brain function? These are just a few of the questions answered in the publication "Air Pollution and Brain Health" by Professor of Neurotoxicology Dr. Pamela Lein and Distinguished Professor Dr. Anthony Wexler of UC Davis.

More and more we are seeing results from recent studies showing a correlation between higher COVID-19 death rates and people who live in air pollution riddled areas. Both in Italy and the United States, people that reside in areas with higher concentrations of PM2.5 in the atmosphere are at least 12% more likely to not survive a bout with COVID-19. These findings are consistent with the findings from the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak that claimed 349 lives in China.