Air Quality

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.

This spring, Zully Jaurez took a deeper dive into how frontline communities in Los Angeles, a city built on the world’s largest urban oil field, mobilized and ultimately won a ban on new oil drilling and begin phasing out existing wells in their city.

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.

“We think Africans in rural areas should have the same quality of power as Africans in urban areas, and that should be the same quality power as everywhere else in the world,” Orosz says.

“When you look at roadway density and proximity to roadways, there’s the highest density in non-white and low-income communities, which leads to disproportionate exposures and consequently disparate health impacts."