Environmental justice analysis of wildfire-related PM2.5 exposure using low-cost sensors in California

Kramer, Amber L.; Liu, Jonathan; Li, Liqiao; Connolly, Rachel; Barbato, Michele; Zhu, Yifang

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159218

Cited by 29 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…All but two of our participants asserted that this exposure had increased in frequency and intensity over the past decade as a result of increases in vehicular traffic, population, chemical emissions from industrial sources and other forms of human activity, wildfires and deforestation, and a lack of concern for the environment. Apart from the increase in wildfire smoke in recent years [ 22 ], these findings are not consistent with studies documenting a decline in PM 2.5 in the Los Angeles Basin over the past 40 years [ 48 ]. However, these individuals have a higher likelihood of living in areas of the US with greater exposure to air pollution, and its impacts occur due to discrimination and segregation [ 22 , 49 , 50 ].…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 87%

“…Apart from the increase in wildfire smoke in recent years [ 22 ], these findings are not consistent with studies documenting a decline in PM 2.5 in the Los Angeles Basin over the past 40 years [ 48 ]. However, these individuals have a higher likelihood of living in areas of the US with greater exposure to air pollution, and its impacts occur due to discrimination and segregation [ 22 , 49 , 50 ]. As noted earlier, 85% of the participants in this study lived in census tracts that were refined as vulnerable communities based on a CalEnvironScreen score above the 75th percentile of census tracts in the state of California.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 87%

“…Low-income residents living in urban settings are especially susceptible to air pollution [ 15 , 16 , 17 ] and to wildfire smoke that can travel hundreds of miles from its origin [ 18 , 19 ]. These residents are also vulnerable to indoor pollution linked to wildfires [ 20 , 21 , 22 ] and other forms of outdoor pollution due to increased poverty and substandard housing [ 23 , 24 ]. Although the indoor environment is often overlooked in relation to environmental health in general [ 25 ] and climate-related health in particular, studies have found that between 80 and 90 percent of the time is spent indoors [ 26 ], and this is likely to increase during wildfires due to public health warnings about the risk of exposure to smoke [ 22 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Adaptation Resources and Responses to Wildfire Smoke and Other Forms of Air Pollution in Low-Income Urban Settings: A Mixed-Methods Study

Palinkas

Leon

et al. 2023

IJERPH

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Little is known about how low-income residents of urban communities engage their knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and resources to mitigate the health impacts of wildfire smoke and other forms of air pollution. We interviewed 40 adults in Los Angeles, California, to explore their threat assessments of days of poor air quality, adaptation resources and behaviors, and the impacts of air pollution and wildfire smoke on physical and mental health. Participants resided in census tracts that were disproportionately burdened by air pollution and socioeconomic vulnerability. All participants reported experiencing days of poor air quality due primarily to wildfire smoke. Sixty percent received advanced warnings of days of poor air quality or routinely monitored air quality via cell phone apps or news broadcasts. Adaptation behaviors included remaining indoors, circulating indoor air, and wearing face masks when outdoors. Most (82.5%) of the participants reported some physical or mental health problem or symptom during days of poor air quality, but several indicated that symptom severity was mitigated by their adaptive behaviors. Although low-income residents perceive themselves to be at risk for the physical and mental health impacts of air pollution, they have also adapted to that risk with limited resources.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 87%

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 87%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Adaptation Resources and Responses to Wildfire Smoke and Other Forms of Air Pollution in Low-Income Urban Settings: A Mixed-Methods Study

Palinkas

Leon

et al. 2023

IJERPH

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“…We did not estimate wild re impacts on air quality indoors, where people spend most of their time (51). Low-cost air quality sensors (e.g., PurpleAir sensors) could help provide part of this information, though they are differentially located in wealthier communities (45,52,53). Evidence suggests that populations in wealthier counties more often Google "air lter" and stay fully indoors at home on heavy wild re smoke days compared to populations in lower income counties (45).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Long-Term Exposure to Wildfire PM2.5 in California: Time-Varying Inequities in Environmental Burden

JA¹,

MA²,

Padula³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Introduction: While considered extreme events, wildfires will lengthen and strengthen in a changing climate, becoming an omnipresent climate-sensitive exposure. However, few studies consider long-term exposure to wildfire fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Here, we present a conceptual model to assess long-term wildfire PM2.5 exposure and evaluate disproportionate exposures among marginalized communities. Methods: We used 2006-2020 California census tract-level daily wildfire PM2.5 concentrations generated from monitoring data and statistical techniques to derive five long-term wildfire PM2.5 measures. We classified tracts based on their CalEnviroScreen (CES) score, a composite measure of environmental and social vulnerability burdens, and their racial/ethnic composition. We determined associations of (a) CES score and (b) racial/ethnic composition with the five wildfire PM2.5 measures using separate mixed-effects models accounting for year and population density. To assess differences by year, models included CES or race/ethnicityyear interaction terms. Results: We conceptualized and compared five annual wildfire PM2.5 exposure measures to characterize intermittent and extreme exposure over long-term periods: (1) weeks with wildfire PM2.5 >5μg/m3; (2) days with non-zero wildfire PM2.5; (3) mean wildfire PM2.5 during peak exposure week; (4) smoke-waves (2 consecutive days with 25μg/m3 wildfire PM2.5); (5) annual mean wildfire PM2.5 concentration. Within individual years, we observed exposure disparities, but generally did not when averaging over the study period. Non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native populations, however, were consistently over-represented among the exposed population compared to their California-wide representation. Conclusion: We found that wildfire PM2.5, measured via five metrics, disproportionately affected persistently marginalized California communities—with substantial year-to-year variability.

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“…The rise of low-cost, crowdsourced sensor networks has greatly increased the spatiotemporal monitoring of PM2.5 monitoring in the United States. Low-cost sensors can report measurements publicly in real-time (Snyder et al, 2013), and recent studies have focused on their calibration (Barkjohn et al, 2021;Delp and Singer, 2020;deSouza et al, 2022), ability to capture wildfire smoke in the wildland-urban interface (Burke et al, 2022;Holder et al, 2020;Kramer et al, 2023), and skill in characterizing indoor PM2.5 from outdoor pollution (Liang et al, 2021;May et al, 2021). While low-cost sensor networks monitoring PM2.5 in urban areas are available, these networks are largely designed by volunteers or are focused on points of interest (e.g., hospitals, elderly care homes, or bus stops) (Esie et al, 2022;Frederickson et al, 2022;Mousavi et al, 2021;Sun et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Data-driven placement of PM2.5 air quality sensors in the United States: An approach to target urban environmental injustice

Kelp¹,

Fargiano²,

Lin³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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In the United States, citizens and policymakers heavily rely upon Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated regulatory networks to monitor air pollution; increasingly they also depend on low-cost sensor networks to supplement spatial gaps in regulatory monitor networks coverage. Although these regulatory and low-cost networks in tandem provide enhanced spatiotemporal coverage in urban areas, sensors are located often in higher income, predominantly White areas. Such disparity in coverage may exacerbate existing inequalities and impact the ability of different communities to respond to the threat of air pollution. Here we present a study using cost-constrained multiresolution dynamic mode decomposition (mrDMDcc) to identify the optimal and equitable placement of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) sensors in four U.S. cities with histories of racial or income segregation: St. Louis, Houston, Boston, and Buffalo. This novel approach incorporates the variation of PM2.5 on timescales ranging from one day to over a decade to capture air pollution variability. We also introduce a cost function into the sensor placement optimization that represents the balance between our objectives of capturing PM2.5 extremes and increasing pollution monitoring in low-income and nonwhite areas. We find that the mrDMDcc algorithm places a greater number of sensors in historically low-income and nonwhite neighborhoods with known environmental pollution problems compared to networks using PM2.5 information alone. Our work provides a roadmap for the creation of equitable sensor networks in U.S. cities and offers a guide for democratizing air pollution data through increasing spatial coverage of low-cost sensors in less privileged communities.

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Environmental justice analysis of wildfire-related PM2.5 exposure using low-cost sensors in California

Cited by 29 publications

References 44 publications

Adaptation Resources and Responses to Wildfire Smoke and Other Forms of Air Pollution in Low-Income Urban Settings: A Mixed-Methods Study

Adaptation Resources and Responses to Wildfire Smoke and Other Forms of Air Pollution in Low-Income Urban Settings: A Mixed-Methods Study

Measuring Long-Term Exposure to Wildfire PM2.5 in California: Time-Varying Inequities in Environmental Burden

Data-driven placement of PM2.5 air quality sensors in the United States: An approach to target urban environmental injustice

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