AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Raj M. Lal, Graduate Student Georgia Tech/PhD, Post-Doc/Air Quality, Sustainability
RAJ LAL, Georgia Institute of Technology
Abstract Number: 109 Working Group: Meet the Job Seekers
Abstract a) Job Type of Interest: (Post-Doc) Air Quality, Sustainability, Environmental Policy b) Anticipated availability: Spring 2020. Graduation planned for Fall 2019 c) Geographic Preference: None
My previous work includes characterizing how emissions from biomass burning is discoloring the Taj Mahal, an iconic Indian monument and one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Here, I generated on-site, spatially-resolved emission inventories for municipal solid waste (MSW) and dung cake burning, and used AERMOD to simulated PM2.5 impacts in Agra and found that MSW burning was the leading contributor to pollutant deposition of the biomass sources (Lal, 2016, Environmental Research Letters). I have also been part of a team that assessed the potential of urban-industrial symbiosis strategies for carbon mitigation with local health co-benefits in China. In this work, I modeled air pollution impacts of novel, waste heat re-use strategies for each province in China. We found that these policy strategies can reduce PM2.5-induced premature mortality between <1% and 47% in Chinese cities (Ramaswami, 2017, Nature Climate Change). Historically, mobile sources have been a leading contributor to ambient pollution in US cities, leading to elevated levels of pollution near major roadways. I compared regulatory monitors in the US from the EPA Near-road (monitoring) Network to other monitors in US cities and found there is no statistical difference (α=0.05) between PM2.5 near-road and the elsewhere in cities (Lal, 2019, in review). My current work includes exploring the link between air quality (as measured with low-cost sensors and simulated in R-Line, the EPA mobile source dispersion model), neighborhood infrastructure, and subjective well-being in a US city (in prep). In addition, I’m using Geos-Chem to simulate air quality in India.