Income and racial disparity in household publicly available electric vehicle infrastructure accessibility.

Publicly available electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure is pivotal for the United States EV transition by 2030. Existing infrastructure lacks equitably distribution to low-income and underrepresented communities, impeding mass adoption. Our study, utilizing 2021 micro-level data from 121 million United States households, comprehensively examines income and racial disparities in EV infrastructure accessibility.

Demographics and risk of isolation due to sea level rise in the United States.

Within coastal communities, sea level rise (SLR) will result in widespread intermittent flooding and long-term inundation. Inundation effects will be evident, but isolation that arises from the loss of accessibility to critical services due to inundation of transportation networks may be less obvious. We examine who is most at risk of isolation due to SLR, which can inform community adaptation plans and help ensure that existing social vulnerabilities are not exacerbated.

Facility design and worker justice: COVID-19 transmission in meatpacking plants.

Background: Meatpacking plants were major sources of COVID-19 outbreaks, posing unprecedented risks to employees, family members, and local communities. The effect on food availability during outbreaks was immediate and staggering: within 2 months, the price of beef increased by almost 7% with documented evidence of significant meat shortages. Meatpacking plant designs, in general, optimize on production; this design approach constrains the ability to enhance worker respiratory protection without reducing output.

Spatial assignment of emissions using a new locomotive emissions model.

Estimates of fuel use and air pollutant emissions from freight rail currently rely highly on aggregate methods and largely obsolete data which offer little insight into contemporary air quality problems. Because the freight industry is for the most part privately held and data are closely guarded for competitive reasons, the challenge is to produce robust estimates using current reporting requirements, while accurately portraying the spatial nature of freight rail impacts. This research presents a new spatially resolved model for estimating air pollutant emissions (hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter less than 10 μm in diameter, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide) from locomotives.

Near-roadway air quality: synthesizing the findings from real-world data.

Despite increasing regulatory attention and literature linking roadside air pollution to health outcomes, studies on near roadway air quality have not yet been well synthesized. We employ data collected from 1978 as reported in 41 roadside monitoring studies, encompassing more than 700 air pollutant concentration measurements, published as of June 2008. Two types of normalization, background and edge-of-road, were applied to the observed concentrations.