Community-Driven Air Justice: Insights from Distributed Air Sensing and Community Partnership in Boston, MA

Scott Hersey, FRANCESCA MAJLUF, Eben Cross, Vedaant Kuchhal, Khue Pham, Sanju Jatti, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

     Abstract Number: 446
     Working Group: Identifying and Addressing Disparate Health and Social Impacts of Exposure to Aerosols and Other Contaminants across Continents, Communities, and Microenvironments

Abstract
In 2020, the Air Partners group at Olin College of Engineering established a new partnership with Alternatives for Community and the Environment (ACE), a decades-old, Black-led environmental justice (EJ) advocacy organization in the EJ community of Roxbury in Boston, MA. The goal of this partnership was to: 1) establish a community-driven air monitoring network, 2) pilot and evaluate the use of HEPA air purifiers to strategically reduce exposure for high-priority residents, and 3) leverage data and insights from monitoring and HEPA pilots to support ACE’s advocacy, base-building, and legislative goals. In this talk we will describe our approach to partnership and stakeholder engagement to identify project priorities and collaboratively plan the project; our process of collaborative project execution as a means of equipping community partners; and insights about the signature and relative importance of various pollutant sources in Roxbury based on the first year of air monitoring across a network of 18 particle and gas sensors. We will also share examples of how insights are packaged to support community goals, as well as case studies describing how partners are leveraging data for action.