Research finds air quality monitors more frequently placed in affluent neighborhoods

SALT LAKE CITY — Researchers at the University of Utah found that air quality monitors are placed more frequently in predominantly white neighborhoods, even though marginalized communities experience higher rates of exposure to air pollution.

Brenna Kelly, a doctoral student at the Department of Population Health Sciences, said the data collected from these monitors can produce biased results because of how much air quality can change from street to street.

“The first thing you need to know is what people were exposed to. And there’s this assumption, I think, that you have this really high quality data so that’s what you should use, but it’s not high-quality for everyone necessarily.”

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Kelly said that while the data being collected is of really high quality, some communities are monitored better.

“Exactly that point where the monitor is, that is a very high quality measurement. But the problem is when we extrapolate. When we say, ‘oh well, two blocks away the air quality must be the same.’ When we know it could be very different.”

Kelly said this issue could have stemmed from decades of policy makers and local and federal authorities picking where to place these monitors. She said this pattern is present in many types of monitors measuring the six major pollutants, particularly lead and sulfur dioxide.

“This is a pattern that we see across all racial and ethnic groups—all non-white racial and ethnic groups—that it’s a, you know, systemic inconsistent pattern that we aren’t measuring these people’s air qualities as well.”

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