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The Contributions of China to Global Air Pollution
About the author: Julie A. Layshock is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Environmental & Molecular Toxicology at Oregon State University. Her work is funded by an EPA Science to Achieve Results (EPA STAR) Graduate Research Fellowship. She is looking forward to a career focused on reducing human exposure to pollutants.
1816 was known as the “year without a summer.” Dust and fine fragments of volcanic material circled the globe high in the stratosphere causing haze and solar effects. That summer, snow fell in New England and European weather was cold and rainy. Crops did poorly. Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein, as the story goes, because she was cooped up inside due to the “volcanic winter” in the summer of 1816. The cause of these aberrations was the 1815 eruption of the Mt. Tambora volcano in Indonesia. The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 had similar atmospheric and climatic effects. So it is common knowledge to atmospheric scientists that winds can transport particulate matter over long distances.
Westerly winds over the Pacific Ocean efficiently carry sea salt and dust from the Gobi Desert to the western United States. Recently, scientists have begun to detect air other particles laden with pollutants that originated from fossil fuels arriving from the Pacific Ocean. Together with manufacturing and industry, people from countries around the world cause tons of these pollutants to be emitted into the air we breathe. Everyday people create these pollutants from operating vehicles and burning coal and natural gas for heat and electricity. The contribution from this global transport compared to regional air pollution is not understood, and impacts to human health can not yet be estimated.
Julie is working toward answering questions raised about long-distance air pollution and how China might contribute to the pollution in the United States. In her travels to China she has seen first-hand the effects of air pollution on human health. Understandable questions arise: Can we really quantify the contribution of pollutants from China and determine the how they affect a person in the United States?
Julie has spent several months in China collecting air particles to compare with those she collected in the Pacific Northwest. Her goal is to identify specific pollutants arising from en route chemical reactions in the atmosphere. Using the chemical “signatures” of the particles, combined with powerful meteorological and wind mapping models, she aims to distinguish Chinese sources from our locally produced air pollution. In the laboratory, she is also designing toxicity tests with the collected particles, identifying the most toxic combustion byproducts.
The results of her research will provide much needed insight into the global movement of combustion-derived pollutants traveling across the oceans by way of air particles. Demonstrating that these pollutants are capable of traveling half-way around the world highlights the need to reduce this type of pollution. Alternative energies and creative pollution control techniques are just a few of the directions that could result from her research.
For further information, Julie can be reached at layshocj@onid.orst.edu.
To learn more about this STAR fellowship research: http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/display.abstractDetail/abstract/8527