Preliminary assessment of the impact of commercial aircraft on local air quality in the U.S.

This thesis examines the impact of aircraft emissions on local air quality by performing two analyses: an assessment of U.S. commercial aircraft contribution to county budgets of primary pollutants in nonattainment areas, and an assessment of the health effects caused by commercial aircraft emissions that serve as precursors to changes in ozone and ambient particulate matter (PM). Based on 148 airports located in 134 counties, this work found that for the base year 2002, the commercial aircraft contribution to county budgets of primary pollutants of CO, NOx, SOx, VOCs, PM2.5, and PM10 ranged from less than 0.01% to as high as 36.36% with an average contribution of 0.82%. The average contribution for CO was found to be 0.81%, NOx 1.73%, SOx 1.39%, VOCs 0.67%, PM2.5 0.24%, and PM0o 0.07%. In general, this research found public health detriments resulting predominantly from PM2.5 related to aircraft emissions. However, the inventories used for the health impacts analysis are not consistent with the inventories that are described above and have several known errors. Therefore the results are presented only to illustrate the methodologies rather than as a good estimate of the health impacts. Notably, ozone disbenefits occurred with the removal of aircraft emissions of NOx. Urban cores experienced increased levels of ozone resulting in a net increase in incidences of ozone-related health endpoints. There are several limitations to the work described in this thesis. In particular, the inventories used for assessing the health impacts may be in error by as much as +50% and the air quality simulations were completed for only 4 months of the year. Therefore, the primary contribution of this thesis is in providing a description of the methodologies that will be used later within a more comprehensive study.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Technology and Policy Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Ratliff, Gayle L. (Gayle Lois)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ian A. Waitz.

• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/40893
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/40893

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40893