Cooking emissions are a major source of racial-ethnic air pollution exposure disparities in the United States

Abstract

Racial-ethnic minority populations in the US are disproportionately exposed to airborne fine particulate matter (PM2.5), but few national studies have focused individually on the sources that contribute to these disparities. We address this gap by conducting a comprehensive analysis of PM2.5 exposure disparities by race-ethnicity in the US, focusing on three source-categories: mobile-sources, cooking, and all other sources combined. Our approach is based on high-resolution, national land-use regression estimates of source-resolved PM2.5 components, derived from high-resolution aerosol mass spectrometer measurements. We find that each of these sources contributes approximately one-third of the overall PM2.5 exposure disparities by race-ethnicity. While the importance of mobile-source tailpipe emissions is well recognized, our study underscores the significance of cooking emissions in creating PM2.5 exposure disparities. This finding represents a potentially significant opportunity to reduce these disparities, as cooking emissions are currently largely unregulated. It has important implications for policymakers and public health advocates aiming to address the persistent issue of racial-ethnic disparities in air pollution.