Space: The final frontier of public health, air pollution data

Fire and heat

Other NASA health and air quality initiatives include the FireAQ project, based at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, which provides free online weekly briefings on fire-related air quality concerns using data from TEMPO and other NASA satellite systems. The FireAQ project was described by Jun Wang, PhD, from the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

NASA also fosters collaborations to reduce health disparities in air quality and respiratory health in urban heat islands and other areas affected by extreme temperatures due to climate change, as discussed by Christopher K. Uejio, PhD, from Florida State University in Tallahassee.

Air pollution expert George D. Thurston, ScD, professor of medicine and population health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, who attended the session, said that the PM2.5 standard includes nontoxic particulate matter, such as soil, and misses sub-micron sized particles, and asked Mr. Haynes whether smaller particles were being measured in the studies he described.

Mr. Haynes replied that the systems do not directly measure PM2.5 but instead rely on aerosol optical depth, a measure of the extent to which atmospheric particles absorb or scatter sunlight.

Dr. Thurston, who in 1987 was coauthor of groundbreaking study showing the link between PM2.5 levels and mortality, is now an advocate for a tougher standard of measuring ambient ultrafine particles with an aerodynamic diameter less than .1 microns in size (PM1).

NASA health and climate data are available at https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/.

Mr. Haynes and Dr. Naeger are NASA employees. Dr. Thurston had no relevant disclosures.