This CBC story describes a winter air pollution study conducted from January to March 2024, in which Professors Arthur Chan and Greg Evans were involved. It features an interview with Dr. Elisabeth Galarneau of Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), who also holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry. She led the study alongside fellow ECCC researcher Alex Lee.
From Professor Arthur Chan’s research group, contributors include Xing Wang (PhD), who is measuring airborne chemicals from tire wear near Highway 401, and Jessica Coats (MASc), who is modelling the impact of non-vehicular sources—such as personal care products, paints, and solvents—on air quality using data from the SWAPIT study.
From Professor Greg Evans’ group, departmental participants in SWAPIT include Dr. Cheol-Heon Jeong (Senior Research Associate), Dr. Yee Ka Wong (postdoctoral fellow), Dr. Christi Jose (postdoctoral fellow), and Nicole Trieu (PhD student).
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Walking down Fort York Boulevard on a fresh, breezy afternoon, scientist Elisabeth Galarneau has no issue pointing out possible sources of air pollution.
The manicured lawns and flower beds? A potential source of airborne pesticides.
The nearby high-rise apartment buildings? A source of pollutants from both heating and cooling, not to mention the cleaners and personal care products being used inside — remnants of which could be circulating down at street level.
Charcoal barbecues, restaurant stoves, fire pits, squealing tires, nearby highways? They all contribute to the air Torontonians breathe.
Now, the first glimpse at an in-depth study conducted by Galarneau and over 100 other scientists looking at winter air quality in Toronto is shedding light on rarely-measured air pollutants across the city, such as microplastics, brake wear chemicals, and metals.
“We’ve done this study to kind of look at the whole mixture of what people are exposed to in cities, as well as how that varies from neighbourhood to neighbourhood,” said Garlarneau, who works for Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Researchers ‘didn’t expect’ to see AQHI exceeded
As the principal investigator on the Study of Winter Air Pollution in Toronto, known by the acronym SWAPIT, Galarneau led a group, that included contributors from 11 universities, that collected air samples from across the city over six weeks from January to March 2024.
Winter is a “typically understudied part of the year” that’s known for having cleaner air than the smoggy summers, Galarneau said — making the early results of their work all the more surprising.
“We thought we would see low concentrations” of pollutants, said Galarneau. Instead, they clocked a number of instances of pollutants heading into moderate or high risk levels on the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI).