What's in the air? Engaging Native American youth in the Northern Plains to reduce air pollution

Dr. Ornelas Van Horne’s study seeks to advance a community-academic partnership with Missouri Breaks Industries Research (an American Indian-owned research center serving Indigenous communities and others in North and South Dakota) and Columbia University to characterize sources of air pollution and identify community-driven solutions through an emissions reduction plan.

Nationally, racialized and minoritized groups in the USA are disproportionally exposed to air pollution. While the general US population has benefited from a decrease in air pollution levels in recent decades, these benefits have not been equitably distributed. Such is the case among Native American communities, suggesting environmental disparities in air pollution mitigation. Through US federal laws, the EPA can approve an Indigenous community to receive treatment as a state 1 designation, allowing them to implement and manage certain environmental programs (e.g., air pollution monitoring or enforcement). Currently less than 15% (86/576) of all federally recognized Indigenous communities operate their own federally approved air monitoring sites. Not only is there a lack of air monitors but there is also a lack of technical support and investment in programs aimed at building capacity and monitoring infrastructure to accurately assess air quality in Indigenous communities.

Consistently, Indigenous Peoples may be particularly vulnerable to air pollution. Moreover, we found in preliminary work that Native American-populated counties in the US may have benefited disproportionally less from general improvements in air quality over the past decades, suggesting environmental disparities in air pollution mitigation. However, limited efforts have been made to explicitly and comprehensively characterize air pollution exposures among Native American communities, even though such information is abundantly available for white populations.

We propose to advance a community-academic partnership with Missouri Breaks Industries Research (an American Indian-owned research center serving Indigenous communities and others in the Northern Plains (North and South Dakota)) and Columbia University to characterize sources of air pollution and identify community-driven solutions through an emissions reduction plan. Specifically, our aims are to 1) Engage Native American youth in the formation of a community-based air monitoring network 2) Determine local sources of PM2.5 exposures through ambient measurements and source-apportionment methods 3) Leverage findings to develop an
emissions reduction plan.

This proposal is not only innovative but also responds to HEI’s call for cross-cutting issues including transparency in policy-relevant science, commitment to at-risk populations, and interest in contributing to the environmental justice space. This proposal responds directly to several strategic goals set in the Health Effects Institute Strategic Plan by: 1) increasing the availability and quality of data collected and reported on racial and ethnic minority populations, and 2) conducting and supporting research to inform disparity reduction initiatives.