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| Apollo team in the Columbia River Gorge, Summer 2014, Source: Jaffe Research Group |
Last year, in Crowd-funded Study Shows Coal Trains Increase Particulate Matter Exposure of Nearby Residents we wrote about a groundbreaking crowd-funded study of particulate matter emissions from coal trains in Washington State by a professor of atmospheric and environmental chemistry at the University of Washington, Dan Jaffe, and his students.
Dr. Jaffe and his team found concentration of PM 2.5 in the air around a home that “rivaled air pollution levels in Seattle’s Duwamish industrial area, home to heavy concentration of diesel trucks, trains and ships.”
This year, in a new peer-reviewed paper, he and his team reported very high PM emissions from coal trains, including “super duster,” trains in the beautiful Columbia River Gorge that left a trail of coal dust so thick it can be seen on video.
For more information, here are three resources:
Train Research : New peer-reviewed paper on coal trains in the Columbia River Gorge, Jaffe Research Group (with link to a video)
Study: coal trains pollute twice as much as freight trains, East Oregonian