August 17, 2017

If you live in a town or city where industrial facilities are emitting chemicals into the air, there is plenty of reason to wonder:

How is this affecting me?

“People living near the nation’s oil refineries, including Philadelphia neighborhoods near Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), are often subjected to noxious smells,” says Gwen Ottinger, PhD, associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Fair Tech Collective, a research group committed to using social science theory and methods to inform the development of technologies that foster environmental justice. “Many experience coughs and other respiratory symptoms they suspect are linked to pollution.“

Most of these communities are left to wonder what toxins might be in the air they breathe, because the ambient air monitoring currently being conducted is limited in scope and timeliness of the data it can provide. And people in areas that do have access to real-time air quality data rarely use it because it is complicated and lacks context.

Read more at the Drexel News Blog