Interactions between air pollution, urban design, and environmental equity: A modeling and passive sampling study of intra-urban patterns of traffic-related air pollutants

We present the development, integration, and application of methods and tools for the investigation of the multi-scale interactions and feedbacks between urban design, air pollution, and environmental equity. We first discuss a framework for connecting knowledge and tools in the fields of air quality and health equity, air pollution exposure estimation, and urban design and planning. This framework is applied to investigate the case study area of Tampa, Florida and its surrounding county. The pollutant focus is on a few traffic-related pollutants, including nitrogen oxides, benzene, butadiene, and acetaldehyde. Our methods include bottom-up emissions estimation utilizing transportation design modeling results, diagnosis and prediction of spatial and temporal pollutant distributions using numerical air pollution modeling, passive sampling of spatial patterns of pollution, and geospatial analyses for exposure estimation and comparisons between subpopulation groups. Here, we present and integrate results from highly-resolved numerical modeling simulations, passive sampling campaigns for nitrogen dioxide and aldehydes, and geospatial analyses of the social distribution of residential exposures, school exposures, and monitoring protection. Results indicate heterogeneous spatial distributions of pollution, with roadway sources and proximity to high traffic volume dominating the footprints of the pollutants studied. A pattern of inequality in pollutant exposures and monitoring protection by race/ethnicity and economic status is also seen. The potential implications of these results for urban planning is explored. Finally, we discuss the development of a children's science museum exhibit on project research content.