13 June, 2024
The European Respiratory Society (ERS), American Thoracic Society (ATS) and the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) have written to NASA to raise concern around the potential discontinuation of NASA products essential to environmental studies.
NASA has recently proposed changes to products that include satellites collecting high quality and fine resolution data on fine particulate matter in the air. This data is critically important to studies on a range of topics including air quality, health studies, exposure assessments, risk assessments and projects, and assessment of environmental justice issues. The loss of this data would make such studies much harder or in some cases impossible.
The health and air quality community relies on this NASA-produced data, and has urged NASA to consider the importance of this data, and continue its use in future work plans.