Special Symposia

Biomass Combustion: Emissions, Chemistry, Air Quality, Climate, and Human Health

Organizers:
Amy Sullivan, Colorado State University
Andy May, Ohio State University
Amara Holder, US Environmental Protection Agency
Shelly Miller, University of Colorado Boulder

Biomass combustion is an important source of aerosols.  Its relevance on local, regional, and global scales is becoming even more important as emissions from other sources are being better controlled.  This smoke impacts human health, degrades visibility, and affects the Earth’s radiation balance.  Biomass combustion has a number of natural and anthropogenic sources including from wildfires, prescribed burning, residential heating and cooking (including cookstoves), and renewable energy generation.  For these reasons and many others, over the last number of years, substantial research has focused on better understanding the emissions, chemistry, and aging of biomass combustion smoke, and its impacts on air quality, climate, and human health.  This special symposium aims to share all of these recent results.  Abstracts focusing on research from laboratory studies, field work, and computational efforts are all welcome.

 

From Aerosol Dosimetry and Toxicology to Health

Organizers:
Otmar Schmid, Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen, Germany
Arthur Chan, University of Toronto, Canada
Flemming R. Cassee, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Netherlands

Current national ambient and occupational air quality standards of inhaled particles are based on particulate concentration (µg/m³) as proposed by epidemiological studies. While this parameter is simple to measure, cell-/tissue-delivered dose, for example surface area dose, has been recognized as a highly relevant metric for biopersistent engineered and ambient particulate matter.  Nevertheless, other parameters like chemical composition, shape and size may also affect particle toxicity. The purpose of this symposium is to bring together aerosol scientists and engineers, toxicologists, epidemiologists and regulatory bodies for elucidating the connection between dosimetry, particle characteristics (e.g. particle size and surface area, chemical composition, mixing state and shape) and adverse health effects.

 

The Air We Breathe: Indoor Aerosol Sources and Chemistry

Organizers:
Rachel E. O’Brien, College of William and Mary
Marina E. Vance, University of Colorado Boulder

Humans spend ~ 90% of their time indoors, making it important to understand the composition of indoor air. Indoor aerosols have a range of sources including nucleation and/or condensation of oxidized VOCs and from SVOCs emitted from different surfaces, such as a cooking and heating sources. Aerosols can also be brought indoors through open doors and windows or through the ventilation systems. Depending on the source and composition of the outdoor aerosol, the chemical composition and size of the particles can change once they are in the building. This indoor-outdoor exchange bridges the atmospheric chemistry of outdoor air to indoor environments.

Indoor aerosol undergoes similar aging processes (e.g., photolysis, oxidation, humidity effects, etc.), but operates at different time scales and with different intensities compared to outdoor aerosol. By applying the tools we use to understand ambient aerosol reactivity and aging to indoor environments, we can develop a better understanding of activities and other parameters that affect the identity, concentration, and size distribution of the aerosol in our buildings. This symposium will highlight studies of indoor aerosols including, but not limited to, sources (indoor emissions, re-suspension, and transport from outdoors) and heterogeneous reactions on aerosol particles and other indoor surfaces. We aim to build a dialogue around our current understanding of indoor aerosol chemistry and to identify needs for future research in this developing field.

 

Air Quality Sensors: Low-cost != Low Complexity

Organizers:
Eben Cross, Aerodyne Research, Inc.
Pratim Biswas, Washington University in St. Louis
John Volckens, Colorado State University

In an ideal world, air pollution could be characterized on a spatial and temporal scale sufficient to resolve the real-world concentration gradients over which it exists. Data obtained through this idealized system could be used to quantify the strength and use-patterns of pollutant sources, inform exposure levels, and promote pollution mitigation strategies to improve local air quality (AQ). Integrated air quality sensor systems have emerged over the past 5 years as an exciting and potentially game-changing approach through which distributed pollution measurements could be realized. But despite the promise and the hype, key questions remain regarding the trustworthiness of pollution concentrations reported by air quality sensors. In this symposium, we invite abstracts that address the following:

• Demonstrations of sensor performance in laboratory and field applications
• Identifying sensor degradation and failure, in-situ and post-process
• Optimization of machine learning approaches to sensor calibration and evaluation
• Data quality objectives – Defining ‘good enough’ and setting realistic expectations
• Measuring particulate matter concentrations across dynamic environmental domains
• Evaluating uncertainties