Air quality is a hot topic in Fairbanks, where local residents contend with chimney smoke and car emissions in winter and wildfires in summer. But some of the biggest air pollution problems under scrutiny by Fairbabnks scientists are those threatening soldiers far from home.
Jennifer Bell, a Ph.D. student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, studies air quality in Iraq with other graduate students in the Catherine Cahill lab group on campus.
Bell studies geogenic, or naturally occurring, sources of the particles that soldiers breathe.
“In Iraq you’re dealing with areas that have immense dust storms,” she said. “You’re looking at a large transport of soil across a major geological region.”
Air quality is a hot topic in Fairbanks, where local residents contend with chimney smoke and car emissions in winter and wildfires in summer. But some of the biggest air pollution problems under scrutiny by Fairbabnks scientists are those threatening soldiers far from home.