Designing Optimal Strategies to Attain the New U.S. Particulate Matter Standards: Some Initial Concepts

This paper proposes that a fundamental principle for designing optimal strategies to attain new U.S. particulate matter (PM) standards be minimization of community and susceptible group exposure to, and inhaled dosage of, ambient PM. Properly done, such minimization maximizes human health risk reduction. To illustrate implementation of such a principle, an initial prototype model, PM Exposure (PMEX), is described that calculates PM exposure and inhaled dosage as figures-of-merit for control strategy optimization. The model accounts for age-occupation and susceptible group activity patterns, indoor-outdoor concentration differences, and geographical location. Modeling results are presented for a hypothetical example, apportioning inhaled dosage among different classes of sources, under alternative assumptions about the relative potency of different PM species categories. The results, while preliminary, demonstrate that conclusions about source class contribution based on inhaled dosage can be appreciably different than those based on ambient air measurements or emission inventories.