Air Quality

The environmental justice chapter in the Air District’s 2022 CEQA Guidelines – the first of its kind to be published in California – recognizes the policy imperative to help address long-standing and emerging inequities in the siting, design and development of potential sources of pollution.

“Wildfires are a special flavor of pollution that we don't totally understand,” David says. “We don’t understand its chemistry, health effects, or how it’s different from urban air pollution. I didn’t realize there was such a gap in that knowledge when I started. The more I dove into it, the more I was motivated to fill that gap.”

Ben Clark argued the winning case against a proposed Marathon-Tesoro refinery in Martinez, CA, as a certified student attorney with the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic.

Risks associated with dust hazards are often underappreciated, which can be costly for impacted communities. This study reviews the sources and chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of dust and its effects on humans and the environmental in the Americas.

Angel Hsu was a guest on PBS Energy Switch’s episode, Environmental Impacts of Energy on Air, looking at air pollution from energy and how we could reduce it. “Particulate matter pollution is the fourth leading risk factor for death...

Lara Cushing is the lead author of a December 2022 study finding that historical red-lining is associated with fossil fuel power plant siting and present-day inequalities in air pollutant emissions. Read the open-access article in Nature Energy and a summary in Axios.

On June 24, 2022, Sarah Uhl Smith testified before Congress in a hearing to review community perspectives on the public health, climate, jobs, and economic benefits of cutting methane pollution from oil and gas infrastructure. Sarah is Chief of Programs at the Clean Air Task Force (CATF). A member of CATF's senior leadership team, she led the growth of the organization’s methane emissions reduction program, building up a small team into a substantial global operation on four continents.