| Affiliations: | Hazard Research Leadership |
| Project Leader: | Mariana Saitas
marianasaitas@tamu.edu Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology |
| Faculty Mentor: | Natalie Johnson, Ph.D. |
|
Meeting Times:
|
TBA |
|
Team Size:
|
3
|
| Open Spots: | 0 |
|
Special Opportunities:
|
Attend conferences and earn co-authorship on publications.
|
|
Team Needs:
|
Chemistry background, coding experience in R, and experience with excel. |
|
Description:
|
In the U.S., communities located nearby heavily industrialized areas have a higher risk of volatile organic compound (VOC) exposure. Children in these communities are at most risk due to their high respiratory rate and their developing defenses. Many hazardous VOCs are linked with adverse human health affects such as cancer and respiratory diseases. These respiratory diseases include asthma. As of now, there are two critical gaps. First, there is a critical gap in current knowledge for the acute risk posed by complex VOC mixtures. Second, due to the wreckage brought upon environmental disasters and to measure unknown hazards, there is a need to provide highly spatially-resolved VOC measurements in the impacted communities. Mobile air monitoring is an up-and-coming method of air sampling and we have practiced this method for sampling VOC mixtures in three different settings rural, urban, and after an environmental disaster. In this project we implement a proton transfer time-of-flight reaction mass spectrometer (PTR-ToF-MS) on our mobile responding to air pollution in disasters (mRAPID) van to characterize VOC mixtures. The implementation of the highly sensitive PTR-ToF-MS portrays the ambient air data in high resolution. However, the VOC mixtures we detect depend on three factors: the VOC sources, metrological conditions of the sampling excursion, and the sampling site. In this project, members will aid in the PTR-ToF-MS data cleaning process and mapping the VOC concentration data from the sampling excursions. |