Quantifying Impacts of Emission Reductions on Air Pollution Equity and Health Effects in New York City

This study examines inequity in exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in New York City and surrounding areas across income groups. By contrasting the sensitivities of public health and equity measures to emissions reductions on a location-by-location basis, this study offers novel yet practical suggestions to coordinate air quality management strategies that prioritize different policy endpoints.Air quality simulations were run using the USEPA’s Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model and its adjoint version over New York City at 1 km resolution. CMAQ is used to estimate concentration surfaces for quantifying exposure to PM2.5. Second, the adjoint of CMAQ was run to estimate the sensitivity of domain-wide inequity parameters to pollution emissions, on a location-by-location basis for different sectors.Preliminary results show that lower income populations in New York City tend to be exposed to higher concentrations of PM2.5. We find that emission reductions in Brooklyn, Harlem, and the B...