Erik StokstadThe smell of summer in Los Angeles, or any major city, is often tinged with asphalt. A freshly paved road or a new tar roof doesn’t just wrinkle your nose, however: A new study suggests fresh asphalt is a significant, yet overlooked, source of air pollution.
In fact, the material’s contribution to one kind of particulate air pollution could rival or even exceed that of cars and trucks."It's a super cool paper," says Allen Robinson, an environmental engineer at Carnegie Mellon University who was not involved with the research. "Asphalt could be a big, important contributor" to air pollution, he says.Air quality has improved over the past several decades in California and many other parts of the United States, largely because of.