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NC State leads
national air quality workshop
It isn’t often that environmentalists, policymakers, scientists, regulators and economists all see eye-to-eye on pollution. But an NC State scientist hopes he helped change all that by leading the creation of the first national workshop on agricultural air pollution, which was held June 5-8 in Potomac, Md.
Dr. Viney Aneja, professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences, in collaboration with Dean William Schlesinger of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, created the workshop in response to what they see as agriculture’s increasing impact on the environment – specifically on air quality.
“Industrial agriculture is a very effective and efficient way to feed large populations, but no one has ever really studied the impact of agricultural pollution on air quality,” Aneja says. “With the varied crops we produce and the fact that we have agriculture throughout our state instead of just in one area, North Carolina is really ground zero in terms of agricultural air pollution.”
The four-day workshop addressed two main issues: identifying the airborne pollutants produced by agriculture, and suggesting the best practices for mitigating these emissions in order to preserve the environment.
More than 400 participants from around the world addressed issues ranging from air quality standards to ecosystems and economics.
Posted June 9, 2006
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