Air Pollution and Environmental Data Justice
Speaker: Amanda Giang, Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia
Air pollution is one of the leading contributors to the global burden of disease, and decades of research have shown that vulnerable communities are often disproportionately exposed to these risks. Addressing these environmental injustices requires attention to the systems that create and perpetuate these harms, including knowledge systems. What infrastructures exist for data about air pollution and its inequitable production and distribution? Who gets to participate in generating and interpreting this data, and whose knowledge counts?
In this talk, Giang will explore these questions through examples from recent projects in the Lab for Environmental Assessment and Policy. She will discuss how improved data transparency and community right-to-know about industrial emitters can inform targeted interventions to reduce exposure disparities; and how community knowledge is a crucial complement to traditional air quality monitoring and modeling through community-based air quality monitoring and citizen science projects.