This Satellite Could Help Clean Up The Air

Short Wave

NPR

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🗓️ 21 June 2023

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

In pockets across the U.S., communities are struggling with polluted air — often in neighborhoods where working class people and people of color live. A new NASA satellite called Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring Pollution (TEMPO) could detail just how polluted those pockets are. Today, NPR climate reporters Rebecca Hersher and Seyma Bayram talk to host Emily Kwong about how this new satellite could help communities like Curtis Bay, a Maryland neighborhood where residents have been fighting for clean air for decades.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:04.6	Today, we are talking about the air we breathe and how to make sure it's clean and healthy.
0:11.3	It's reporting done by our colleagues, climate reporters Rebecca Herscher,
0:16.0	Family, and Shema Bidrum.
0:18.5	Who is making her Shortwave debut?
0:21.1	Welcome to the show.
0:22.1	Hi, so happy to be here.
0:23.4	We're so happy you're here.
0:25.0	Thank you both.
0:26.0	Shema, you've been doing some reporting about air pollution at a really important time.
0:30.9	Wildfire smoke, people across the US have been dealing with a lot of that this spring.
0:35.6	Clean air is not something we should take for granted.
0:38.2	Yeah, you know, it can be easy to forget about air pollution.
0:42.0	Not so much when the air is full of wildfire smoke, but you know, the rest of the time,
0:46.3	you can't see most of the pollution in the air.
0:48.6	It's invisible, but it's really dangerous.
0:51.1	It is bad for our health.
0:52.6	It is bad for our quality of life.
0:54.4	It's bad for the length of our lives.
0:55.8	It shortens them.
0:57.4	And so Shema and I have been doing some reporting about a new NASA satellite that hopefully
1:02.7	will make the air in the US cleaner for everyone.
	...

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