Armistead G Russell

Georgia Institute of Technology | GT · School of Civil & Environmental Engineering

We examined the association between ambient air pollution exposure and risk of spontaneous abortion (SAB) using Georgia state-wide fetal death records from 2005-2014. Each SAB case was matched to four non-SAB pregnancies by maternal residential county and conception month. Daily concentrations of ten pollutants were estimated and linked to maternal...

Ambient air quality across the southeastern US has improved substantially in recent decades. However, emissions from prescribed burn remain high, which may pose a substantial health threat. We employed a multistage modeling framework to estimate year-round, long-term effects of prescribed burn on air quality and premature deaths. The framework inte...

Foreign investments in overseas coal-fired power plants (OCPs) largely impede decarbonization efforts, yet their global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have not been sufficiently quantified. Here we analyse investment data from 908 OCPs worldwide, and then reveal current annual emissions of 0.53 GtCO2 yr⁻¹ and a historical cumulative total of 26 GtC...

China’s strategy to concurrently address climate change and air pollution mitigation is hindered by a lack of comprehensive information on source contributions to health damage and carbon emissions. Here we show notable discrepancies between source contributions to CO2 emissions and fine particulate matter (PM2.5)-related mortality by using adjoint...

Smoke from wildfires poses a substantial threat to health in communities near and far. To mitigate the extent and potential damage of wildfires, prescribed burning techniques are commonly employed as land management tools; however, they introduce their own smoke-related risks. This study investigates the impact of prescribed fires on daily average...

The 2022 wildfires in New Mexico, United States, were unparalleled compared to past wildfires in the state in both their scale and intensity, resulting in poor air quality and a catastrophic loss of habitat and livelihood. Among all wildfires in New Mexico in 2022, six wildfires were selected for our study based on the size of the burn area and the...

United States (US) background ozone (O3) is the counterfactual O3 that would exist with zero US anthropogenic emissions. Estimates of US background O3 typically come from chemical transport models (CTMs), but different models vary in their estimates of both background and total O3. Here, a measurement-model data fusion approach is used to estimate...

Food consumption contributes to the degradation of air quality in regions where food is produced, creating a contrast between the health burden caused by a specific population through its food consumption and that faced by this same population as a consequence of food production activities. Here we explore this inequality within China’s food system...

Nearly 56% of the global population lives in cities, with this number expected to increase to 6.6 billion or >70% of the world’s population by 2050. Given that cardiometabolic diseases are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in people living in urban areas, transforming cities and urban provisioning systems (or urban systems) toward healt...

Increased throughput and container ship backlogs at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach due to supply chain disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant increase in the number of ships near the California coast, leading to concerns about increased air pollution exposure of nearby communities. We use a combination of satelli...

Studies in mice and older, subfertile women have found that air pollution exposure may compromise female reproduction. Our objective was to evaluate the effects of air pollution on ovarian reserve and outcomes of ovarian stimulation among young, healthy females. We included 472 oocyte donors who underwent 781 ovarian stimulation cycles at a fertili...

Prescribed burning is a major source of a fine particular matter, especially in the southeastern United States, and quantifying emissions from burning operations accurately is an integral part of ascertaining air quality impacts. For instance, a critical factor in calculating fire emissions is identifying fire activity information (e.g., location,...

Nitrate is formed through the chemical production of gas-phase nitric acid and subsequent partitioning to the aerosol phase during the daytime. Many studies in the past separated these two aspects, even though they occur simultaneously in the atmosphere. To better understand the nitrate formation mechanism and effectively mitigate its production, i...

The chemical composition of PM2.5 has a significant impact on human health and air quality, and its accurate knowledge can be used to identify contributing emission sources. Assessing and quantifying the impacts of various factors (e.g., emissions, meteorology, and large-scale climate patterns) on the main PM2.5 chemical components can give guidanc...

High energy consumption and high cost have been the obstacles for large-scale deployment of all state-of-the-art CO2 capture technologies. Finding a transformational way to improve mass transfer and reaction kinetics of the CO2 capture process is timely for reducing carbon footprints. In this work, commercial single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) w...

Background: Previous studies of short-term ambient air pollution exposure and asthma morbidity in the United States have been limited to a small number of cities and/or pollutants and with limited consideration of effects across ages. Objectives: To estimate acute age group-specific effects of fine and coarse particulate matter (PM), major PM co...

Annual fine particulate matter (PM2.5) mass concentrations in the South Coast Air Basin (SoCAB) of California decreased from around 30 μg/m3 to 11 μg/m3 between 2000 and 2013 but rose from 11 μg/m3 to 13 μg/m3 between 2014 and 2018, raising important questions about the effectiveness of ongoing emission control policies. A two-step generalized addi...

Formaldehyde is a key Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) and ozone precursor that plays a vital role in the urban atmospheric radical budget on par with water vapor, ozone, and nitrous acid. In addition to modulating radical and ozone production, ambient formaldehyde has both carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic inhalation health effects. This study conc...

The transition of onroad vehicles from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs) has been promoted in the United States at federal and state levels to reduce emissions of conventional air pollutants and CO2. One state level effort is a plan from California to mandate that all new passenger vehicle sales are EVs by 2035. Using t...

Growing evidence suggests that fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) likely increases the risks of dementia, yet little is known about the relative contributions of different constituents. Here, we conducted a nationwide population-based cohort study (2000 to 2017) by integrating the Medicare Chronic Conditions Warehouse database and two independently s...

The growing abundance of data is conducive to using numerical methods to relate air quality, meteorology and emissions to address which factors impact pollutant concentrations. Often, it is the extreme values that are of interest for health and regulatory purposes (e.g., the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone uses the annual maximum da...

Tropospheric ozone (O 3 ) affects Earth’s climate and human health. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), major contributors to O 3 formation, are of particular interest. Generally, the measured concentrations of VOCs (M-VOCs) and O 3 show nonlinear or even opposite time serial-trend. We attributed the phenomenon to survivor bias: lack of insight of t...

Ionic liquids (ILs) have been used for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture, however, which have never been used as catalysts to accelerate CO2 capture. The record is broken by a uniquely designed IL, [EMmim][NTf2]. The IL can universally catalyze both CO2 sorption and desorption of all the chemisorption‐based technologies. As demonstrated in monoethanolam...

In this work, we compare the air quality benefits of a variety of future policy scenarios geared towards controlling EGU (electricity generating units) emissions between the present-day conditions and 2050. While these policies are motivated by reducing CO2 emissions, they also yield significant co-benefits for criteria pollutants, such as ozone an...

Particulate sulfate is one of the most important components in the atmosphere. The observation of rapid sulfate aerosol production during haze events provoked scientific interest in the multiphase oxidation of SO2 in aqueous aerosol particles. Diverse oxidation pathways can be enhanced or suppressed under different aerosol acidity levels and high i...

India is home to 1.3 billion people who are exposed to some of the highest levels of ambient air pollution in the world. In addition, India is one of the fastest-growing carbon-emitting countries. Here, we assess how two strategies to reuse waste-heat from coal-fired power plants and other large sources would impact PM2.5-air quality, human health,...

The air quality model CAMx is used to conduct source apportionment modeling of both O3 and PM2.5 over the continental United States (CONUS) for 2016 and 2028. The model is configured to track sulfate, nitrate, SOA, and primary PM2.5, including elemental metals, with PSAT and O3 with OSAT. The source apportionment simulations differentiate emissions...

Ozone levels have been declining in the Los Angeles, CA, USA area for the last four decades, but there was a recent uptick in the 4th highest daily maximum 8-hour (MDA8) ozone concentrations from 2014 to 2018 despite continued reductions in the estimated precursor emissions. In this study, we assess the emissions and meteorological impacts on the 4...

Background Air pollution has been associated with cognitive function in the elderly. Previous studies have not evaluated the simultaneous effect of neighborhood-level socioeconomic status (N-SES), which can be an essential source of bias. Objectives We explored N-SES as a confounder and effect modifier in a cross-sectional study of air pollution a...

Gaseous and particulate chlorine species play an important role in modulating tropospheric oxidation capacity, aerosol water uptake, visibility degradation, and human health. The lack of recent global continental chlorine emissions has hindered modeling studies of the role of chlorine in the atmosphere. Here, we develop a comprehensive global emiss...

Accurate spatiotemporal air pollution fields are essential for health impact and epidemiologic studies. There are an increasing number of studies that have combined observational data with spatiotemporally complete air pollution simulations. Land-use, speciated gaseous and particulate pollutant concentrations and chemical transport modeling are fus...

A number of studies have found differing associations of disease outcomes with PM2.5 components (or species) and sources (e.g., biomass burning, diesel vehicles and gasoline vehicles). Here, a unique method of fusing daily chemical transport model (Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling) results with observations has been utilized to generate sp...

Cities are increasingly advancing multiple societal goals related to environmental sustainability, health, well-being, and equity. However, there are few comprehensive data sets that address social inequality and equity across multiple infrastructure sectors, determinants, and outcomes, particularly at fine intra-urban spatial scales. This paper: (...

Plain Language Summary Secondary inorganic aerosol (particularly SNA: sulfate, nitrate and ammonium) was found to be the main component of particulate matter in northern China. SNA can be formed through different reaction pathways, such as gas phase, aqueous phase, and heterogeneous reactions pathways. However, quantitative assessments of different...

As ozone air quality standards are tightened, the portion of the standard taken up by background ozone (BGO) increases. BGO is the ozone that would be observed in the absence of anthropogenic emissions. BGO can be a major, sometimes dominant, contribution to overall ozone. BGO originates from noncontrollable sources (e.g., wildfires, stratosphere-t...

Background: Air pollution has been associated with cognitive decline among the elderly. Previous studies have not evaluated the simultaneous effect of neighborhood-level socioeconomic status (N-SES), which can be an essential source of bias. Objectives: We explored N-SES as a confounder and effect modifier in a cross-sectional study of air pollutio...

Chemical transport models (CTMs) are widely used in scientific studies and air quality management. A particular application is to assess how pollutant concentrations, particularly ozone and PM, respond to emission controls. As part of a dynamic evaluation, two widely used CTMs, CMAQ and CAMx, were evaluated for how well they captured trends in obse...

Modeling studies project that in the future surface waters in the northeast US will continue to recover from acidification over decades following reductions in atmospheric sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions. However, these studies generally assume stationary climatic conditions over the simulation period and ignore the linkages between so...

Data from satellite instruments provide estimates of gas and particle levels relevant to human health, even pollutants invisible to the human eye. However, the successful interpretation of satellite data requires an understanding of how satellites relate to other data sources, as well as factors affecting their application to health challenges. Dra...

Ozone isopleths describe the non-linear responses of ozone concentrations to changes in nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and thus are pivotal to the determination of O3 control requirements. In this study, we innovatively use the Community Multiscale Air Quality model with High-order Decoupled Direct Method (CMAQ-HDDM) t...

Aerosol acidity governs several key processes in aerosol physics and chemistry, thus affecting aerosol mass and composition and ultimately climate and human health. Previous studies have reported aerosol pH values separately in China and the United States (USA), implying different aerosol acidity between these two countries. However, there is debat...

Long-term air pollution exposure, notably fine particulate matter, is a global contributor to morbidity and mortality and a known risk factor for coronary artery disease (CAD) and myocardial infarctions (MI). Knowledge of impacts related to source-apportioned PM2.5 is limited. New modeling methods allow researchers to estimate source-specific long-...

Prescribed burning (PB) is a prominent source of PM2.5 in the southeastern US and exposure to PB smoke is a health risk. As demand for burning increases and stricter controls are implemented for other anthropogenic sources, PB emissions tend to be responsible for an increasing fraction of PM2.5 concentrations. Here, to quantify the effect of PB on...

While carboxylic acids are important components in both particle and gas phases in the atmosphere, their sources and partitioning are not fully understood. In this study, we present real-time measurements of both particle- and gas-phase concentrations for five of the most common and abundant low-molecular-weight carboxylic acids (LMWCA) in a rural...

Ecosystem productivity is strongly modulated by the atmospheric deposition of inorganic reactive nitrogen (the sum of ammonium and nitrate). The individual contributions of ammonium and nitrate vary considerably over space and time, giving rise to complex patterns of nitrogen deposition. In the absence of rain, much of this complexity is driven by...

US background (US-B) ozone (O3) is the O3 that would be present in the absence of US anthropogenic (US-A) emissions. US-B O3 varies by location and season and can make up a large, sometimes dominant, portion of total O3. Typically, US-B O3 is quantified using a chemical transport model (CTM) though results are uncertain due to potential errors in m...

Ammonia (NH3) emissions have large impacts on air quality and nitrogen deposition, influencing human health and the well-being of sensitive ecosystems. Large uncertainties exist in the “bottom-up” NH3 emission inventories due to limited source information and a historical lack of measurements, hindering the assessment of NH3-related environmental i...

The COVID-19 quarantine in China is thought to have reduced ambient air pollution. The overall exposure of the population also depends, however, on indoor air quality and human mobility and activities. Here, by integrating real-time mobility data and a questionnaire survey on time-activity patterns during the pandemic, we show that despite a decrea...

On-road emissions sources degrade air quality, and these sources have been highly regulated. Epidemiological and environmental justice studies often use road proximity as a proxy for traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) exposure, and other studies employ air quality models or satellite observations. To assess these metrics' abilities to reproduce o...

Because of the severe air pollution in northern China, facemasks have gained popularity in this area in recent years. Although the results of previous studies have shown the effectiveness of wearing facemasks for intercepting particles, the individual differences and the overall health benefits of wearing facemasks have not been comprehensively doc...

Recently, oil and natural gas (O&NG) production activities in the Denver-Julesburg Basin have expanded rapidly. Associated nonmethane hydrocarbon (NMHC) emissions contribute to photochemical formation of ground-level ozone and include benzene as well as other hazardous air pollutants. Using positive matrix factorization (PMF) and chemical mass bala...

The objective of this study is to identify the key factors that influence residential energy use in energy modeling. In doing so, we explore the impact of data transformations and analysis methods in developing residential energy models using social, economic, and demographic indicators at the zip code level in Atlanta, GA and for the entire state...

Many sensitive ecosystems in areas protected for biodiversity conservation in the United States suffer from exposure to excess reactive nitrogen (Nr) released by fossil fuel combustion and agricultural practices and deposited onto the land surface and water bodies. The Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model was applied over the contiguous Un...

Inspired by conclusions of previous studies that Ga has the promoting effect on CO2 conversion, we performed density functional theory (DFT) investigations of CO2 adsorption on forty icosahedral (Ih) symmetry 13-atom clusters. They include M13, Ga-centered M12Ga, M-centered M12Ga, Ga-centered M11Ga2 and M-centered M11Ga2 clusters (M = Fe, Co, Ni, C...

Aerosol acidity governs several key processes in aerosol physics and chemistry, thus affecting aerosol mass and composition, and ultimately the climate and human health. Previous studies have reported the aerosol pH separately in China and the United States, implying a different aerosol acidity between these two countries. However, underlying mecha...

Ammonium is one of the dominant inorganic water-soluble ions in fine particulate matter (PM2.5). In this study, source apportionment and thermodynamic equilibrium models were used to analyze the relationship between pH and the partitioning of ammonium (ε(NH4+)) using hourly ambient samples collected from Tianjin, China. We found that a “Reversed-S...

We present the development of a multiphase adjoint for the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model, a widely used chemical transport model. The adjoint model provides location- and time-specific gradients that can be used in various applications such as backward sensitivity analysis, source attribution, optimal pollution control, data assimil...

Cropland ammonia volatilization (VNH3,AG) is a major pathway of agricultural nitrogen loss. It remains unclear, however, how climate warming and human intervention (e.g., agricultural management) will affect VNH3,AG. Here, we use a fully coupled agroecosystem/chemical transport model and multiple climate projections to quantify the changes in clima...

Background: Emissions control programs targeting certain air pollution sources may alter PM2.5 composition, as well as the risk of adverse health outcomes associated with PM2.5. Objectives: We examined temporal changes in the risk of emergency department (ED) visits for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and asthma associated with short-term increases...