Clean Air for All: Assessment and Mitigation of Urban Air Pollution

恶劣的空气质量每年导致全球880万人过早死亡和1140亿美元的社会成本。在这个NSERC探索研究项目中，我们将使用先进的测量方法和数据挖掘，以更好地了解排放源和由此导致的加拿大人暴露在空气污染中的情况。我们将检查与交通相关的空气污染，因为这是加拿大的优先事项；三分之一的加拿大人居住在离主要道路足够近的地方，可能会受到影响。我们将研究汽车尾气排放的最小颗粒物，以及这些颗粒物如何与大气中已存在的其他污染物相互作用。我们将探索近年来车辆刹车和轮胎颗粒物排放的增加情况。我们还将评估在2020年新冠肺炎关闭期间，交通流量的减少如何有助于空气质量的改善，以及为什么不同的污染物和不同的城市会有不同的影响。我们将探索新的方法来了解空气污染暴露在地理上和时间上的变化，并在全国和地方应用这些方法，重点评估潜在更脆弱人群的暴露。特别是，我们将进一步开发我们的AirSENCETM空气质量监测技术，部署这些基于传感器的仪器网络，并开发新的策略来挖掘我们收集的数据。我们将研究加拿大40个城市环境颗粒物的化学反应活性如何不同，以及在过去十年中它是如何变化的，以确定与不同城市的颗粒物组成和来源混合物的潜在关系。这项研究将提供新的基础知识，并进一步开发技术，以支持联邦、省和市政府所需的政策制定。我们的发现将有助于确定安大略省减少卡车排放的新政策所带来的空气质量好处。此外，他们还将提供知识，以评估加拿大是否需要围绕刹车和轮胎的“非尾气”排放制定政策。这项研究将提供通过未来促进可持续性的政策变化可能实现的空气质量长期收益，以及加拿大目前的空气质量监测是否能够随时量化这些改善。总体而言，这项NSERC发现计划将提供减少暴露在空气污染中的健康负担所需的新知识。

Poor air quality is associated with 8.8 million premature deaths and $114B in social costs per year globally. In this NSERC Discovery research program, we will use advanced measurement methods coupled with data mining to better understand emission sources and the resulting exposure of Canadians to air pollution. We will examine traffic related air pollution as this is a priority in Canada; one third of Canadians live close enough to major roads to be potentially impacted. We will investigate the smallest particles emitted from vehicle tailpipes and how these interact with other pollutants already present in the atmosphere. We will explore the increase in recent years in particle emissions from vehicle brakes and tires. We will also evaluate how the reduction in traffic contributed to the improvement in air quality during the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown, and why this differed for different pollutants and in different cities. We will explore new approaches to understanding how exposure to air pollution varies geographically and over time, and apply them nationally and locally, with a focus on evaluating the exposure of people who are potentially more vulnerable people. In particular, we will further develop our AirSENCETM air quality monitoring technology, deploy networks of these sensors-based instruments, and develop new strategies for mining the data we collect. We will examine how the chemical reactivity of ambient particles differs across 40 Canadian cities and how it has changed over the last decade, in order to identify underlying relationships with particle composition and the mixtures of sources in different cities. This research will contribute new fundamental knowledge and further develop technology to support needed policy development by federal, provincial and municipal governments. Our findings will help identify air quality benefits achieved through Ontario's new policy to reduce emissions from trucks. Moreover, they will provide knowledge to evaluate the need for Canada to develop policy around "non-tailpipe" emission from brakes and tires. This research will inform the long-term gains in air quality that can potentially be achieved through future policy changes to promote sustainability, and whether Canada's current air quality monitoring will readily be able to quantify these improvements. Overall this NSERC Discovery program will provide new knowledge needed to reduce the health burden of exposure to air pollution.