Community Use of Stationary and Mobile Pollution Monitors in Somerville and Metropolitan Boston MA USA

Abstract

Over the last fifteen years, advocacy groups in Somerville and nearby communities have worked with environmental health research scientists and graduate students to study local air pollution and, more recently, noise patterns. These efforts can help inform community partners, policy leaders and regulatory agencies about serious environmental health risks. The results can help with land use and transportation decisions, and mitigation needs.Our community-based projects have ranged from short student practicums to formal multi-year research projects funded by NIH, EPA, HUD and Kresge Foundation. The practicums that we have engaged in have included consideration of turf vs natural athletic field exposures, lead in children’s jewelry, community garden soil safety, bicyclist exposures and aviation noise patterns.In Somerville, a city of 80,000 with intense highway and diesel commuter rail exposures, we had the advantage of early near roadway pilot projects that used time integrated Nitrogen Oxide passive monitors and the Aerodyne Research mobile lab to show steep gradients of transportation related gases and ultrafine particle concentrations. This research, and public health records that showed a high correlation between surface transportation intensity and excess lung cancer and heart attack deaths, alerted us to the serious nature of transportation pollution. And to the need to bring local environmental health concerns to the forefront in policy and project decisions.Over the last decade we have also been engaged with Tufts and other universities in a series of near roadway research programs known as the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH). CAFEH has relied on intense mobile monitoring, assisted by stationary monitors, with a special focus on Ultrafine Particles, to relate biomarkers of cardiovascular risk in small populations to transportation sources. This research approach is difficult and might benefit from similar efforts at greater scale.