Mapping street-level air pollution: One year of mobile monitoring in disadvantaged communities across New York State

New York State has enacted public policies that have enabled a multi-decadal trend in air quality improvement. However, the benefits of cleaner air are not felt equally across the populace, with individuals residing in disadvantaged communities bearing disproportionate air pollution burdens due to proximity of polluting sources, in addition to other environmental stressors. To address this disparity, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation contracted with Aclima, Inc. to perform mobile air quality monitoring in ten disadvantaged communities across the State. Monitoring was performed using a fleet of vehicles equipped with a sensor node of quick-response (one-second) air pollution monitoring instruments, which drove every publicly accessible road within the study area numerous times over the course of a year (within 2022-2023). For the results discussed in this paper, the collected data were processed in a model that aggregates results to 100-meter road segment for the pollutants: atmospheric fine particulate matter (PM_2.5), black carbon (BC), ozone (O₃), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO₂), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), and methane (CH₄). Modeled results represent an effective air pollution screening tool for identifying persistent and elevated air pollution features on a highly localized, street-level scale. Across the ten communities, 274 road segments (0.26% of the roughly 107,000 road segments measured) were modeled to a concentration above the annual National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for PM_2.5, suggesting that concentrations at those locations could exceed the standard. Overall, this study provides the communities with empirical evidence to address air pollution through mitigation and prevention strategies, while also guiding statewide policy based on broader trends observed across communities.<i>Implications:</i> This report broadly presents findings for a large-scale mobile air monitoring study conducted for a year across 10 disadvantaged communities within New York State. The results from this study represent a robust screening tool to evaluate the general behavior of an array of air pollutants, allowing for the identification of extremely localized pollution features. These findings serve to inform air pollution reduction and mitigation strategies within these communities and across New York.