Geographic and Sociodemographic Variability in Air Pollution Exposure

Air pollution is one of the largest environmental health threats. The problem of air pollution in urban areas and its uneven impacts across different socio-economic groups have been well documented. Less attention has been paid, however, to how this issue affects people’s everyday practices and experiences, especially in places where the pollution is not visible as smog. This project examines the extent to which sociodemographic variation shapes the experience of urban air pollution. Understanding more about how people behave and make decisions related to the air is vital for informing policy measures to address pollution and its impacts. Results from this project will be shared with research participants and disseminated to a wide academic and non-academic audience. Broader impacts will also include a dialog between community organizations working on urban pollution and the development of learning modules for middle and high school students. This ethnographic research explores how people navigate polluted air across three scales: households, localities, and the larger urban landscape. It asks: (1) How do residents of highly polluted neighborhoods think about and manage the air inside their homes and its link with the traffic-filled air beyond their windows and doorways?; (2) How do residents sense and respond to air’s varied qualities when moving along streets dense with traffic and what do controversies over traffic control measures say about different people’s perceptions of air pollution?; (3) How do flows of air and vehicles across a city shape the day-to-day experience of residents, and in what ways do various policies impact these flows? Many studies of air pollution hexplored geographic settings where smog or haze is readily apparent and impacts social perceptions of toxicity. Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews, this research will deepen understandings of whether behavioral responses to air pollution vary in contexts where it is not readily visible. The project will advance theoretical conversations within anthropology on resource materiality, the lived experience of pollution, and environmental science. This project is jointly funded by the Cultural Anthropology program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.