Efficacy of Vehicle Emission Control Interventions in Ameliorating Air Pollution Exposure and Health Burdens in Marginalized Communities

What? Examine the air quality, health, and equity implications of adoption of US EPA Clean truck rule, Advanced Clean Trucks regulation, and vehicle omnibus regulation in Chicago and whether policy-driven air pollution changes in Chicago are transferable nationwide. 
How? 1. Use new satellite data, along with other publicly available datasets, to improve the accuracy of nationwide heavy-duty vehicle emissions, with a focus on emissions from warehouse environments. 2. Use updated emissions estimates in a high-resolution chemical transport model to understand how warehousing-related emissions and emission reduction policies affect exposures, health, and equity.
Where: Chicago and Nationwide.

Air pollutants and greenhouse gases from the U.S. transportation sector are substantial drivers of
negative public health outcomes and climate impacts – burdens that have historically been unjustly borne by marginalized populations. Through successful clean air regulations, transport-related pollution has declined, but disparities in exposure and health impacts persist, increasing the need for targeted policy interventions. However, assessing the efficacy of policies designed to reduce inequitable air quality and health burdens is challenging without highly spatially resolved and accurate characterizations of population exposures and susceptibilities. Here, we propose state-of-the-science observational and numerical modeling research that will improve neighborhood-scale characterizations of air pollution exposure and assess the efficacy of transport-focused air pollution remediation policies in reducing exposure and health disparities. Our proposed research will leverage recent advances in the spatiotemporal resolution of satellite observations as a result of the launch of NASA’s TEMPO geostationary air quality observing platform. TEMPO data will be used to better constrain nitrogen dioxide exposure, identify overburdened communities, and verify the recent finding that inventory-based emissions datasets underestimate heavy duty vehicle nitrogen oxide emissions in warehouse-prevalent environments. TEMPO data, along with state-of-the-science land use/cover data and a real estate warehouse database, will also be used to inform a high-resolution statistics-based Land-Use Regression Model (LURM) which will in turn be used to estimate U.S.-wide nitrogen dioxide health impacts and population disparities. Further work, using the previously mentioned tools and a novel vehicle telemetry dataset, will update the representation of vehicle activity in an inventory-based emissions dataset, seeking to more accurately capture emission activity patterns, magnitudes, and intensities – particularly those of idling heavy-duty vehicles. Using our improved inventory-based emissions dataset, we will perform a suite of simulations using a high-resolution regulatory-grade chemical transport model (CTM) – the two-way coupled Weather Research Forecasting and Community Multiscale Air Quality modeling system – to more accurately assess air pollution exposure, health impacts, and associated disparities in baseline and transportation emission reduction policy simulations. Our CTM simulations will be geographically focused on North America’s largest freight hub, Chicago, IL and will assess the air quality (nitrogen dioxide, fine particulate matter, and ozone), health, and environmental justice benefits and/or tradeoffs that result from the recently adopted EPA Clean Trucks Rule as well as more ambitious, but yet to be nationally adopted zero-emission vehicle interventions, i.e., California's Advanced Clean Truck and Heavy-Duty Engine and Vehicle Omnibus Regulations. As a final exploratory step, we will investigate methods whereby the policy-driven pollutant outcomes simulated in our limited-domain CTM can be scaled to provide U.S.-wide air quality amelioration or exacerbation estimates. Research outcomes from our proposed work will be shared with local and international community outreach partners for use in education and advocacy initiatives. Ultimately, the work proposed here will advance our air pollution exposure characterization capabilities and will provide rigorous assessments of the efficacy of transport-related emission reduction policies in ameliorating unjust exposure and health outcomes.