Communities adjacent to large industrial facilities frequently bear the brunt of environmental pollution. Current regulatory monitoring approaches fall short of documenting the spatial, temporal, and chemical nature of air pollutants from industrial emissions. We addressed this critical data gap by combining state-of-the-art analytical instrumentation deployed on a mobile laboratory to characterize concentration gradients for hazardous air pollutants in the highly industrialized Mississippi River corridor of Louisiana. We quantified gradients in hazardous air pollutants, including ethylene oxide and chloroprene, showing higher measured levels of nearly all pollutants compared to regulatory modeling. These measured concentrations were used to calculate cancer and non-cancer health risks at the neighborhood scale for communities in the study area.
Peter DeCarlo,
Johns Hopkins University
Dr. Peter DeCarlo is a Professor at the Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering with a joint appointment in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science. Dr. DeCarlo has a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from the University of Colorado, and a BS in Biochemistry from the University of Notre Dame. His research is focused on characterizing the chemical composition of particulates and gases in in the air we breathe both indoors and out. This work enables a more complete understanding of the intersection between energy, air quality, climate, and human health. He also is interested in the intersection of science and policy and was an AAAS Science Policy Fellow at the US EPA. Dr. DeCarlo has served as a representative to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), as an advisory board member for the Thirdhand Smoke Research Consortium and PA Physicians for Social Responsibility. Dr. DeCarlo has co-authored over 140 peer reviewed publication and has been identified as a highly cited researcher by Clarivate Analytics.