Air Quality Research Center

99% of the world's population is exposed PM 2.5 at unhealthy levels according to Lancet Planetary Health's recently released study. The Washington Post author Kasha Patel highlights:

In 2019, they found 0.001 percent of the global population is exposed to levels of PM 2.5 pollution that the World Health Organization deems safe. The agency has said annual concentrations higher than 5 micrograms per cubic meter are hazardous.

Work out in polluted air and you may miss out on some of the brain benefits of exercise, according to two, large-scale new studies of exercise, air quality and brain health...

Year after year California has seen some of the largest and most deadly wildfires, not only by acreage burned, but by also by hazardous air quality. The smoke has turned some cities in neighboring state’s air quality into the dirties in the world, including outside of the state.

Last week, Michael S. Regan, Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, announced that the EPA will reconsider strengthening the limits and standards for fine particulate matter.

Roy Harrison, a researcher and professor at the University of Birmingham, UK, recently conducted a study to review the reductions in PM 2.5 and NO2 levels that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns over 11 cities. Harrison applied machine learning techniques to remove the effects of weather on the gaseous concentrations to see how the air quality had truly changed due to the lockdowns. 

Low-cost air quality sensors are becoming more accurate and affordable to the general public month by month. There is a grand amount of research occurring in the field so air quality sensors. Government, private industry, non-profits and community scientists are all concerned about the air pollution around the world.

It’s widely known through the Air Quality Research Center that outdoor air pollution leads to untimely deaths throughout the world, however, a recent publication by Dr. Erwan Monier, Associate Professor of Climate Change Impacts in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, and associates demonstrated that many of these deaths are a result of cross-state air pollution. 

At the 2018 American Thoracic Society International Conference, UC Davis researcher, Dr. Laura Van Winkle and Dr. Kent Pinkerton participated in a cross-disciplinary evaluation of the evidence gathered over 30 years concerning the potential for outdoor air pollution to contribute to the onset of new airway disease.

A recent study by the University of Leeds and the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen divulged PM2.5 had only a small reduction across China and it was not lowered at all in Northeast China. The PM2.5 reduction of 11% across China was disappointing in comparison to the reduction 27% of NO2 across China.