All neighborhoods are not created equal when it comes to air quality.
Power plants, idling traffic, diesel trucks shipping goods and even the corner restaurant create different pollution signatures for different locations within cities and towns.
This summer, researchers from Northeastern University are embarking on a multi-year quest to come up with block-by-block air quality insights in Boston-area municipalities.
The members of the interdisciplinary impact engine, known as iSUPER, will install more than 100 stationary pollution sensors in Brookline and Chelsea, and also explore Greater Boston streets in a van outfitted with monitoring equipment to detect a greater variety of pollutants on a sub-neighborhood level.
“Cities and towns have been making air pollution control decisions based on a few limited monitoring stations and regional averages,”…
