Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Group

Many Canadians are concerned about the effects of air pollution on their health and on the health of the environment, and that concern tends to be magnified in communities where there are prominent local sources of air pollution. We have identified 3 Ontario cities with distinctive industrial profiles and significant community concern about the effects of air pollution on their citizens: Sudbury, Hamilton, and Sarnia. Moreover, it is clear that the air pollution emitted in these cities is distributed over an immense geobraphical area, so the effects of air pollution generated is of interest to stakeholders well beyond the local areas. In this study, we will collect particulate air pollution from Sudbury, Hamilton, and Sarnia and subject it to a detailed chemical analysis; this will allow us to compare the air pollution in these locations with the chemical composition of air pollution collected in other cities and see if there are unique characteristics of local particulate pollution that may be attributable to local industrial sources. We will also test the effects of the collected particulate air pollution in experimental biological systems to see what kinds of effects are caused by exposure to this type of pollution, and compare it to the effects of pollution from other sources. These studies will give us a better understanding of the nature of air pollution in industrial cities in Ontario, the different contributions to local air pollution made by industrial and non-industrial sources, and the potential health effects of exposure.