New York is an energy hog, London and Paris use relatively fewer resources and Tokyo conserves water like a pro. These are just a few of the findings from a new study on “megacity metabolism”—the world’s first comprehensive survey of resources used and removed in each of the planet’s 27 largest metropolitan areas.
Led by engineers at the University of Toronto, an international team of researchers examined data on how resources pass through the globe’s largest cities, such as burning natural gas for heating, using electricity for public transit or disposing of solid waste and wastewater. Published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the findings could point the way toward strategies to make cities cleaner, greener and more sustainable—or at least less greedy.
Megacities—metropolitan areas with populations greater than 10 million—continue to grow in size and economic prominence. In 1970, there were only eight megacities across the world. This number grew to 27 in 2010, and it’s expected to reach 37 by 2020. These urban areas currently generate 14.6 per cent of the globe’s total GDP, but they also consume resources disproportionately.
The study found that today’s megacities are home to only 6.7 per cent of the world’s population, yet they consume 9.3 per cent of global electricity and produce 12.6 per cent of global waste.
(With a population of approximately 6 million, the Greater Toronto Area doesn’t make this megacity list.)
According to U of T civil engineering professor and industrial ecologist Chris Kennedy (CivE), some cities are guiltier than others.
“The New York metropolis has 12 million fewer people than Tokyo, yet it uses more energy in total: the equivalent of one oil supertanker every 1.5 days,” he said. “When I saw that, I thought it was just incredible.”
Kennedy, also a senior fellow at the Global Cities Institute, explained that some of the differences have to do with geography: colder megacities like Moscow and New York use more fuel for heating. Another factor is economic activity.
“Wealthy people consume more stuff and ultimately discard more stuff,” he said. The average New Yorker uses 24 times as much energy as a citizen of Kolkata, and produces over 15 times as much solid waste.
Yet as can be seen by comparing New York and Tokyo—both relatively rich megacities in temperate regions—wealth and geography aren’t everything. Tokyo’s efficient design and vast network of public transit reduces its environmental impact, and demonstrates that in some cases, smart urban policies can reduce resource use, even in the face of rising GDP and exploding populations.
Tokyo has also aggressively addressed leaky pipes, a strategy that has reduced water losses to 3 per cent. This compares to over 50 per cent leakage in cities like Rio de Janiero and Sao Paolo.
“These are places that are really short of water, and yet they’re leaking it away,” said Kennedy.
In the study, Kennedy and his team shared several other successful policies:
- Moscow has built the largest district heating system in the world, providing combined heat and power to buildings housing 12 million people; this being more efficient that using separate systems for each building.
- Seoul has developed a system for reclaiming used wastewater for secondary uses like flushing toilets, increasing the overall efficiency of water use.
- London has been subject to rising electricity costs and taxes on the disposal of solid waste. It is the only megacity for which per capita electricity use is going down even as GDP goes up.
While Kennedy and other researchers have studied resource use in big cities before, they have often been limited either by a small sample size or by a definition which did not include the entire metropolitan region. This new study is the first to capture detailed information from these 27 megacities.
This research contributes to an increased understanding of the growing complexity of cities. “A megacity is not a politically defined region,” said Kennedy. “It’s a commuter-shed. The people who live there have a common labour and housing market, and they travel throughout the region for daily work or leisure.”
Across the world, megacities are seeing massive increases in population, but the findings show that they are growing even faster in terms of energy use and GDP. In the developing world—especially China, home to more megacities than any other country—the combination of more people and more consumption per capita is putting an enormous strain on the planet’s resources.
Yet the study suggests that megacities proliferate, smart policy decisions can make a difference. “What we’re talking about are not short-term, one-election issues, but long-term policies on infrastructure that shape cities over years or decades,” said Kennedy.
“The evidence is that megacities can make some progress in reducing overall resource use, and I think that’s encouraging.”
It started with a viral campaign for the world’s most energy-efficient light bulb in 2013. Now, international media are also calling Nanoleaf a “green job” leader.
Founded by University of Toronto engineering alumni Gimmy Chu (ElecE 0T6), Tom Rodinger (IBBME PhD 0T7) and Christian Yan (ElecE 0T6), the company has grown from its days as a crowdfunded venture working from the founders’ apartments to a bi-continental company attracting investment from the likes of Li Ka Shing (dubbed “Asia’s richest man” by Bloomberg News).
Now, Nanoleaf’s efforts have been highlighted by Reuters as a best practice for the increasing trend of ‘green jobs’ in a country that the International Monetary Fund ranks as the world’s largest economy.
Nanoleaf recently won two 2015 Red Dot international design awards for its bulbs and opened an office in Toronto. And, on Earth Day, the startup launched its newest product: Nanoleaf Gem—described as “the world’s first all-glass, designer LED bulb.”
One of Nanoleaf’s newest recruits, U of T alumna Leslie Chen, shared the latest on their recent growth.
What’s new with NanoLeaf?
Nanoleaf recently set up an office in downtown Toronto, so we are now officially a global company that spans two continents.
The Toronto office opened in January this year. We were originally in the MaRS building, which started off with three people, but now we have moved into our own office at Queen and John, having expanded to eight people. There are about 20 employees in China and we have a small office in Hong Kong with a few people as well.
The expansion to Toronto was to focus on research and development, to expand our team of engineers as well as develop the creative team, which includes me and a new industrial designer. We mostly coordinate with the China team over Skype and email. Meetings are usually nights for us and mornings for them!
We’ve also been getting ready for the launch of our new product, the Nanoleaf Gem, which is the world’s first LED décor bulb.
How has the green lighting landscape developed since you came on the scene?
Green lighting has definitely expanded since Nanoleaf started. There are now so many ‘green’ companies and products out there, but Nanoleaf is constantly striving to be the best and to create the most sustainable yet stylish products available.
What are you most interested to see in the near future in terms of energy-efficient lighting?
We’re excited to see even more energy-efficient bulbs available. Not just energy-efficient but also LED lights that challenge the industry standards, which inspired us to create the Nanoleaf Gem.
People usually don’t associate LED bulbs with beauty, so we wanted to create a light bulb that was eco-friendly but still appealed to designers and artists.
What’s your next big goal or challenge to work through as a company?
Our goal for the Nanoleaf Gem is to get designers and others in that industry to start thinking about adopting LED lighting. We’re all about green without compromise. Green products usually only focus on the energy efficiency aspect and forget about style, but we wanted to bring those two worlds together with the Gem.
Any favourite U of T startup companies that you’re keeping an eye on?
We recently saw Fuel Wear Clothing in Metro, which was really interesting. Similar to Nanoleaf, it was founded by three engineering grads who launched their product with a Kickstarter campaign.
This story is Part 4 of an eight-part series, Engineering Experiential Learning, running throughout spring and summer 2015.
Whether it’s informative YouTube videos, educational apps or massively open online courses (MOOCs), digital technology is opening up new opportunities for how instructors can teach. However, keeping up with this proliferation of new tools can be daunting—but it doesn’t have to be.
On Friday, May 1, U of T Engineering is hosting EdTech Workshop 2015: Ideas to Action. Geared toward post-secondary educators, the one-day event is an opportunity for instructors to learn best practices for innovative teaching and learning from some of U of T’s leaders in educational technology.
Free of charge to members of the U of T community, EdTech will focus on three streams: online teaching, tablet teaching and inverted teaching. For each stream, the morning will consist of engaging ‘how-to’ sessions, followed by an afternoon of case studies.
This year’s EdTech is led by U of T Engineering staff members Allison Van Beek, instructional technology specialist, and Estelle Oliva-Fisher, assistant director, student experience & teaching development. The workshop was founded in 2011 by the late Harpreet Dhariwal to encourage knowledge sharing across U of T campus about new learning technologies.
“I have been coming to the EdTech Workshop for several years and find it is inspirational and a source of useful knowledge and contacts for my own courses and curricular development,” said Melody Neumann, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Arts & Science.
Here are six innovative teaching methods you could leader at EdTech this year:
1. How to film a video in your office—green screen and all!
Scott Ramsay (MSE), recipient of this year’s early career teaching award at U of T Engineering, will demonstrate how to compete with the cuddly cats of YouTube. His presentation—a short educational video on the creation of short educational videos—will cover five different and effective video formats. “This presentation promises to be unlike anything you have seen in an academic conference,” said Ramsay. “Don’t miss it!”
2. Make the most of MyMedia
The latest technology advances have people increasingly worried about their online presence being accessed by unwanted audiences. MyMedia has proved a viable solution for instructors to share content with the U of T community. Application programmer Andy Wagner will demonstrate how to get the best use of MyMedia for instructors who wish to upload and share material strictly among the community.
3. How to own the camera
Senior lecturer Lisa Romkey (EngSci) will take the stage with another senior lecturer, Alan Chong (ECP), to help instructors take control of their on-screen presence and help others to do the same. This interactive presentation will also include participants trying their hand at presenting and receiving real-time feedback from the experts. “Given the increasing role played by videos in our teaching and learning, this is a very important professional development opportunity for our faculty and staff,” said Romkey.
4. How to get your audience involved
With Echo360’s Active Learning Platform, senior lecturer Michelle French made a class of over 900 seem a lot smaller. “Students used their electronic devices to take notes, engage in clicker-type activities and type in questions and answers for the lecturer and each other during class time,” she said. French will describe her experience with the software and the student feedback received in her presentation, as well as provide guidance for instructors who want to incorporate technology enhanced active learning into their own programs.
5. Don’t exclude anyone
The Canadian Association of the Deaf recognises 3.15 million hard of hearing Canadians and the CNIB estimates over half a million live with significant vision loss. Making education material accessible is a critical task for effective teaching. In this workshop, instructors will learn to optimise their tech piece to reach the largest possible audience, while ensuring those with different abilities will experience the same level of learning quality.
6. Does EdTech teaching work?
As an institutional researcher at OpenUToronto and data manager for EdX and Coursera MOOCs at UofT, Stian Håklev is well versed in the world of analytics. Instructors will learn to use these tools to measure the effectiveness of a given mode of delivery and learn how best to to a given audience. In analytics we have a guide that allows us to continue improving our teaching.
Registration for EdTech Workshop 2015: Ideas to Action closes on Wednesday, April 29th.
U of T Engineering has awarded 11 faculty and staff for their continued pursuit of excellence. Recipients were recognized for their leadership, citizenship and innovation at the “Celebrating Engineering Excellence” reception this week—an annual event to honour all those who’ve won awards in the Faculty over the past year.
“It is my privilege to bring everyone together to celebrate another year of extraordinary achievements at U of T Engineering and to thank all of you for contributing to our shared success” said Dean Cristina Amon. “On behalf of the Faculty, I offer warm congratulations to the outstanding recipients of this year’s staff, teaching and research awards.”
This year’s winners:
Joe Baptista (MIE)
Influential Leader Award
This award is for a staff member who demonstrates exemplary support for the U of T Engineering’s endeavours and has made significant sustained contributions to the Faculty.
Joe joined MIE in 2003 as building services officer, and was promoted to director of operations in 2011. During his 12 years with MIE, Joe has made several significant contributions to the physical assets of the department, exemplifying dedication and leadership. One of his major achievements was proposing and overseeing the consolidation of MIE’s administrative facilities, which had previously been split between two different buildings. This was an enormous undertaking, requiring not only outstanding organizational skills and technical expertise, but a great deal of tact and diplomacy. Joe’s excellent interpersonal skills and dedication to the Faculty earned him the MIE Employee of the Year Award in 2008 and the Agnes Kaneko Citizenship Award in 2010.
Jason Foster (EngSci)
Faculty Teaching Award
This award is for a teacher who demonstrates outstanding classroom instruction, develops and uses innovative teaching methods, and goes above and beyond to ensure the best possible learning experience for students.
Since joining EngSci in 2005, Jason has developed and taught a number of mandatory capstone and cornerstone design courses and played an important role in developing other capstone design courses across the Faculty. In 2010, he worked closely with the vice-dean, undergraduate to establish the Engineering Design Education Group as a means of promoting increased collaboration among the Faculty’s design instructors. Regarded as an expert in design education, Jason has been active in initiatives related to design education outside the Faculty in partnership with organizations such as OISE and the Toronto District School Board. His research on engineering education has been presented at conferences for the Canadian Engineering Education Association and the American Society for Engineering Education.
Kelly Hayward (ECE)
Harpreet Dhariwal Emerging Leader Award
This award, which was renamed last year in honour of the late Harpreet Dhariwal, recognizes a staff member who demonstrates potential to assume a more senior leadership role.
Kelly joined ECE as program manager for ECTI in 2008, and was appointed operations manager in 2012. In this role, she is responsible for the management and oversight of nearly one third of all the Faculty’s space. In addition to responding to emergencies such as water leaks and heating failure, Kelly has shown great leadership in pulling stakeholders together to find ways to maximize limited resources. Her outstanding communications skills and commitment to the Faculty’s mission have inspired her fellow staff members to contribute at the highest level. Kelly is a volunteer member of several committees and has served as co-chair of ECE’s Joint Health and Safety Committee. She is also the department’s green ambassador, working to make ECE and the Faculty more sustainable.
Belinda Li (ECE)
Agnes Kaneko Citizenship Award
Named in memory of a valued staff member, this award recognizes staff who have served with distinction and made contributions to the Faculty’s mission above and beyond their job description.
Belinda is the administrative coordinator for the Energy Group in ECE. Her positive attitude and consistent willingness to go beyond her expected duties and lend a hand have made her indispensable to the faculty and students she supports, as well as her administrative colleagues. Belinda is always seeking out new opportunities to learn more, contribute more and improve administrative efficiency and student experience. She takes great pride in her work and genuinely cares about our students; she invited some of the graduate students in her group who could not make it home for Thanksgiving to her home for dinner.This is just one example of the dedication and consideration for others that makes Belinda such an exemplary Faculty citizen.
Mike Mehramiz (ECE)
Quality of Student Experience Award
This award recognizes a staff member who has made significant contributions to the quality of student experience in the Faculty.
Mike has served as manager of the Design Centre Lab in ECE since 2002. In this role, he provides crucial support and guidance to students throughout the creation of their final year design project, as well as other design assignments. Mike continually seeks to improve the experience of students in his lab through innovative technological, ergonomic and operational enhancements. He recently completed an overhaul of the lab, which doubled its capacity and created a more user-friendly space in just a few months. The students he serves consider him a mentor, and often seek his advice on technical problems outside the scope of the lab. Mike received a U of T Excellence Through Innovation Award in 2012 for his role in developing and running a series of tutorials to teach ECE students electronic lab skills.
Scott Ramsay (MSE)
Early Career Teaching Award
This award recognizes a faculty member who has demonstrated excellence in teaching during their early career.
Scott is the course coordinator for ‘Introduction to Materials Science,’ a first-year course taken by about half of our undergraduates. He not only completely overhauled and enhanced this course, but also developed initiatives to improve the first-year experience in all large, introductory courses. Improvements included implementing portable tabletop labs which don’t require laboratory space, and short online videos explaining key course concepts. Scott is currently spearheading a project to create multimedia reusable learning objects related to materials science, which can be used across multiple courses and departments. He is also developing the open online course ‘Introductory Chemistry from a Materials Perspective,’ which will be offered next year. In 2012, Scott received the Wighton Fellowship, a national award recognizing excellence in laboratory teaching.
Jonathan Rose (ECE)
Sustained Excellence in Teaching Award
This award recognizes a faculty member who has demonstrated excellence in teaching over a sustained period of time.
Jonathan’s commitment to student success has made him an extremely popular educator and sought-after supervisor. He is known for his emphasis on teaching design and his innovation in laboratory and design courses. Jonathan developed a unique design course for graduate students called ‘Creative Applications for Mobile Devices.’ This groundbreaking course has yielded roughly 75 new mobile apps in disciplines ranging from music to medicine. Jonathan is also passionate about entrepreneurship, serving as chair of The Entrepreneurship Hatchery’s Advisory Board. A four-time recipient of ECE’s teaching award, he has also been recognized with the Faculty Teaching Award in 2012 and the U of T Faculty Award in 2014.
Honghi Tran (ChemE)
Research Leader Award
Established in 2013, the Research Leader Award recognizes leadership in interdisciplinary and multiple investigator initiatives that have enhanced the Faculty’s research profile within the broader community.
Honghi is the Frank Dottori Professor of Pulp & Paper Engineering and director of the U of T Pulp & Paper Centre. Over the past 25 years, he has led and coordinated 10 research consortia reaching across borders and disciplines to advance the global pulp and paper industry. These consortia have undertaken projects involving more than 30 faculty members and 200 students from across the University, as well as 50 industrial partners from around the world. Honghi’s own research has also had an exceptional impact on the industry. For example, the sootblower nozzle he designed to remove deposits in boilers is now used in more than 95 per cent of recovery boilers worldwide, saving the industry an estimated $100M per year. His many research awards include the John S.Bates Gold Medal from the Pulp and Paper Technical Association of Canada.
Darlene Gorzo, Jaro Prostupa and Joe Wong (all ECE)
Innovation Award
This award recognizes staff members who have developed an innovative new method, technology or system.
Darlene, Jaro and Joe are being honored for their development of ECE’s Graduate Research Information Database (GRID). GRID was developed to address the University’s requirement for an annual meeting between all PhD students and their supervisory committees. With roughly 260 PhD candidates in ECE, scheduling these meetings demanded significant departmental resources. GRID solves this problem by providing a web-based virtual meeting space where students can submit a summary of their accomplishments and future plans, and supervisors can review this information and provide feedback. Administrative staff can also use GRID to collect and store other data related to the student’s progress, such as completion of course requirements. GRID has significantly streamlined a previously cumbersome process, resulting in considerable benefits to students, faculty and staff.
See a Flickr gallery from the “Celebrating Engineering Excellence” reception.
University of Toronto engineers and a pediatric surgeon have joined forces to discover how physical forces like pressure and tension affect the development of limbs in embryos—research that could someday be used to help prevent birth defects.
The team, including U of T bioengineer Rodrigo Fernandez-Gonzalez from the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME), U of T mechanical engineer Yu Sun (MIE) and SickKids Hospital’s Dr. Sevan Hopyan, used live imaging and computer models to study the links between mechanical forces, changes in cell shape and cell movement in embryos.
Their study—published this week in Nature Cell Biology—used cutting-edge techniques to gain valuable insight into the fundamental processes of arm and leg development.
Mapping-out the growth of ‘proto-limbs’
An embryo starts out shaped like a ball, then grows to create complex shapes like limbs. In early embryonic development, cells divide into three layers:
- the ectoderm, which forms the nervous system, skin and sensory organs;
- the mesoderm, which produces the skeleton, muscles and most of the major organs, and;
- the endoderm, which turns into the body’s respiratory tract and elimination systems.
In the study, the team looked at cell behaviours in the ectoderm that promote limb development. They used unique tools, including micro-chiseling ablating lasers, atomic force microscopes and layer-by-layer computer models, to explore the early stages of limbs in unprecedented detail.
They discovered that as cells divide and develop, the way they communicate with each other and the pressure resulting from movements of the three cell layers can impact how well limb buds—the early stages of what become arms or legs—are formed.
“We found amazing evidence on how mechanical forces regulate the remodeling of cells in the ectoderm layer and how the stress field changes when the ectoderm changes its shape as it develops,” says Professor Sun.
Prior to this work, scientists and engineers didn’t have the tools and techniques to understand changes of shapes on a tissue scale and on small groups of cells.
Thanks to their findings, the researchers know that two major cell layers, the ectoderm and mesoderm, speak to each other both mechanically and biochemically, that is, through molecules shuttling back and forth. This communication is linked to changes in the embryo.
Engineering insights from the world of the cell
“The idea that two tissues are mechanically interacting and that such interaction affects cellular behaviour is really exciting to see,” says Fernandez-Gonzalez.
To measure mechanical forces, the authors used techniques borrowed from the world of manufacturing and engineering, including the use of a laser to cut interfaces between cells.
“If you hold a rubber band between your hands and I cut it while it’s loose, nothing happens,” says Fernandez-Gonzalez. “But if you stretch the rubber band, your hands snap back when I cut it. That’s essentially what happens with cell boundaries,” he explains.
“We know some of the genes that are important in the structure of the embryo for development to proceed, but we didn’t know how those pathways were linked with movement in the cells,” says Hopyan.
A path to preventing limb defects
While their study was done on a highly fundamental level, the team says it will allow them and others to take important further steps like measuring forces in and between cells.
The study also paves the way for the possibility of creating better simulations of cell remodeling and the early development of limbs.
“This research could someday be used in potential medical applications to prevent limb deformations,” says Hopyan.
The work is one of the first times a research team has applied biophysical methods to the study of cell and tissue mechanics in live mammals.
Possible long-term outcomes in this research field could result in a drug that could alter mechanical stress on cells in embryos, repairing what would otherwise have become a deformed limb.
A trio of recently published studies from a team of University of Toronto engineers has found that air pollution could be spreading up to three times farther than thought—contributing to varying levels of air quality across cities.
Past research on air pollution from vehicle tailpipes has shown poor air quality anywhere between 100 to 250 metres of major roadways.
But in a paper published in the recent edition of the journal Atmospheric Pollution Research, U of T chemical engineer Greg Evans (ChemE) and his partners at Environment Canada have found that concentrations of pollutants from traffic are still double at a distance of 280 metres downwind from highway 400 north of Toronto.
One in three Canadians, and half of all Torontonians, lives within 250 meters of at least one major roadway. These roads, says Evans, range from 10-lane highways to most four-lane streets with steady traffic.
“We used to think that living near a major road meant that you lived near a lot of air pollution,” says Evans. “But what we’re finding is that it’s not that simple, someone living right on a major road in the suburbs may not be exposed to as much pollution as someone living downtown on a side street near many major roads.”
In the same study, Evans demonstrated that for somebody living near multiple roads, they could be exposed to up to ten times more pollutants than if they didn’t live near any major roads.
“It used to be that we measured air quality on a regional or city scale,” says Evans. “But now we’re starting to understand that we need to measure air quality on a more micro scale, especially around major roadways.”
According to Health Canada, poor air quality from traffic pollution is associated with a number of health issues, such as asthma in children and other respiratory diseases, heart disease, cancer, and increased rates of premature death in adults. The Canadian Medical Association attributes 21,000 premature deaths each year in Canada to air pollution. A separate study published last month also linked traffic pollution to delayed cognitive development in children.
Lab in a truck
Throughout 2014, the research team travelled the streets of Toronto measuring vehicle emissions from a mobile lab that resembles a Canada Post mail truck.
“One of the aspects of our work that’s unique is that we’re using real-time instruments to make measurements in seconds,” says Evans. “You have to do the measurements right there, right away, or the exhaust will be gone.”
The team’s findings suggest that people living or spending time near major roadways could be exposed to elevated levels of a dangerous chemical brew of ultrafine particles, volatile organic compounds, black carbon and other pollutants.
“The ultrafine particles are particularly troubling,” says Evans. “Because they are over 1000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, they have a greater ability to penetrate deeper within the lung and travel in the body.”
On a typical summer day in Toronto, Evans’ instruments measure approximately 20,000 ultrafine particles in each cubic centimetre of air. This means that for every average breath, Torontonians are inhaling 10 million of these nano-sized particles. These numbers increases to 30,000 and 15 million in the winter, when there is more stagnant air and less evaporation of the compounds.
25% of cars causing 90% of pollution
A second paper by Evans and colleagues, published in the March 2015 edition of the journal Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, suggests that a small number of older or “badly tuned” cars and trucks produce the majority of vehicle pollution.
The study made on-the-spot measurements of 100,000 vehicles as they drove past air-sampling probes of the main laboratory on College Street, one of Toronto’s many major roadways.
Evans and team found that one-quarter of the vehicles on the road produced:
- 95% of black carbon (or “soot”),
- 93% of carbon monoxide,
- and 76% of volatile organic compounds such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes, some of which are known-carcinogens.
“The most surprising thing we found was how broad the range of emissions was,” says Evans. “As we looked at the exhaust coming out of individual vehicles, we saw so many variations. How you drive, hard acceleration, age of the vehicle\e, how the car is maintained—these are things we can influence that can all have an effect on pollution.”
A vehicle emissions map of Toronto
A third paper, due out in the June 2015 edition of the journal Atmospheric Environment, looks at variations in traffic pollution throughout Toronto, evaluating how exposure to largely unexplored, unregulated ultrafine particles varies across the city. (View the map here.)
Evans is currently working with Environment Canada, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change and Metro Vancouver to design, test and install new air quality measurement stations around the cities of Toronto and Vancouver. These stations will support enhanced monitoring of the air quality health index during this summer’s Pan Am games in Toronto. More broadly, this research will provide a basis for future near road air quality monitoring in cities across Canada so as to get a more accurate portrayal of the exposure of Canadians to traffic pollution.
Evans and team hope that their research may someday lead to policy changes that could help better target the small number of vehicles that pollute the most, as well as to better decide where to build schools, hospitals, daycares, seniors residences and other structures to protect people who are especially vulnerable to air pollution.