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IDENTIFYING LOCAL AND REGIONAL SOURCE IMPACTS
Impact/Purpose:
The goal of this task is to develop methods and models to reduce the uncertainty in quantifying local and regional air pollutant source impacts on ambient samples collected in speciated PM, air toxic, and semi-continuous measurement networks. A combination of high resolution sampling, organic and inorganic analytical methods, and models will be developed and evaluated to reduce the uncertainty in source apportionment:
(1) semi-continuous inorganic species sampling
(2) inorganic analysis
(3) organic analysis for medium flow samples
(4) multivariate receptor models for ambient samples
(5) regional and local models
In addition, this task contributes to two additional tasks that have research focused on reducing the uncertainty in source apportionment: Identify Sources of Human Exposure (21176), and NAAQS implementation (21179).
Description:
Air pollution from ambient sources continues to adversely impact human health in the United States. A fundamental goal for EPA is to implement air quality standards and regulations that reduce health risks associated with exposures to criteria pollutants and air toxics. However, this is not an easy or straightforward task. The NRC has recommended that research should be conducted to identify those pollutants and sources that are responsible for the most significant risks in air sheds. A critical component of this research is to develop an understanding of how pollutants from sources impact ambient concentrations and, in turn, how these concentrations relate to exposures. This information provides a fundamental linkage for evaluating health impacts and developing effective mitigation strategies.
The Identify Local and Regional Source Impacts task is one of two tasks supporting the research area "Reducing Uncertainty in Source Apportionment". It complements Task 21176, Identifying Sources of Human Exposure, which supports method and model development for distinguishing ambient and indoor sources and impacts. The purpose of this task is to develop, evaluate, and apply methods and models that can be used to improve our understanding of how sources impact ambient concentrations and, in particular, to identify local and regional source contributions to ambient air concentrations. The task will include analyses of data and modeling results to determine which sampling methods and modeling improvements will likely have the most significant impact in reducing uncertainties in source apportionment analyses. Using insights from these analyses, inorganic and organic analytical methods will be developed and evaluated and semi-continuous sampling methods will be evaluated. In addition, enhancements to receptor modeling tools will be made that will increase their ability to discern local and regional impacts. Finally, the enhanced methods and models will be applied to demonstrate the increased confidence in the resulting estimates of local and regional source contributions to ambient air concentrations. The tools and methods developed in this task will provide scientists and policy makers with information needed to analyze source contributions and to develop and evaluate effective control strategies.