PH18 Assessing Human/Environment Interactions
Exhibit Hall
8:00 AM - Thursday
(PH199) Demographics and air pollutant exposures.
Marshall, J1, 2, Granvold, P3, Hoats, A4, McKone, T2, 5, Nazaroff, W4, 1 Energy and Resources Group, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA2 Indoor Environment Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA3 Independent researcher, Berkeley, CA4 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA5 Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
ABSTRACT- This work explores issues of who is more exposed and who is less exposed to air pollution. We estimate the inhalation intake of ambient air pollutants for ∼ 27,000 people in the Los Angeles region. The analysis approach involves three steps. The first step is to acquire or generate spatially- and temporally-resolved ambient (i.e., outdoor) concentration fields. The second step is to establish microenvironment factors to account for circumstances when exposure concentrations differ from ambient concentrations. Two examples of such circumstances are that buildings offer some protection against some outdoor pollutants, and that concentrations of pollutants emitted from vehicles are often higher in a vehicle than in general urban air because of increased proximity to the emissions source. The third step is to use survey data on activity (to determine breathing rate and microenvironment) and location (to determine the local ambient concentration) to evaluate inhalation intake of air pollutants by each survey respondent. Our results indicate the population distribution of inhalation intake rates of air pollution. There are significant inequalities in inhalation intake rates, as indicated by the Gini coefficient. Preliminary results suggest Gini coefficients in the range ∼ 0.3 – 0.6, with higher values corresponding to pollutants emitted by point sources rather than area or mobile sources. Inhalation intake rates correlate with demographic attributes such as ethnicity and income. Preliminary results suggest that ethnicity is more important than income as a determinant of inhalation intake rates, and that median inhalation rates of primary pollutants are ∼ 15 – 50% higher for minority groups than for non-Hispanic Whites.
Key words: Environmental justice, Distribution, Los Angeles