Using wood pellets as the fuel to heat large buildings such as schools can seem like an attractive choice. UMass Amherst environmental health scientist Richard Pelletier is examining whether burning this form of wood is harmful to public health.
UMass Amherst focuses on educational support and applied research for the renewable energy field through its Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, whose Clean Energy Extension unit, part of UMass Extension, is devoted to outreach education and the delivery of new research-based techniques and technologies for practical application. UMass Extension is the Massachusetts partner in the national Cooperative Extension System, a public university network of outreach educational units linked through its federal partner, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In Massachusetts, Extension education began at Massachusetts Agricultural College, predecessor of UMass Amherst, in 1911 and was formalized at the national level in 1914. Today, UMass Extension has programs in agriculture and commercial horticulture, 4-H youth development, clean energy, and nutrition education. It also supports work in water resources, environmental conservation, food science, and food safety.
Transcript of Richard Peltier of UMass Amherst is researching smart energy choices that protect human health :
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Here in Massachusetts we're making choices on what types of fuel we use to keep us warm. Wood has been used for hundreds of years in Massachusetts. But now new technologies in the form of pellets of compressed wood make modern wood-heating much more convenient. But we do not yet know whether burning this form of wood is harmful to public health.
Most adults take around 20,000 breaths per day. In each breath, we inhale hundreds or thousands of different particles. And some of the particles can make us quite sick. Poor air quality is linked to the premature death of more than 8 million people worldwide.
In the U.S. more people die of air pollution than they do from car accidents. With support from UMass Clean Energy Extension, our mobile air quality sampling laboratory is working to answer this question. Inside this truck we have air pollution research equipment that measures the chemicals found in air. These data will be able to tell us whether or not pellet emissions can be harmful for our community. And knowing this information is important for policymakers, industry leaders, scientists, and families. This is research that matters.
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