Publications

See my Google Scholar profile for further details.

2024

Air quality health impacts of India's coal plants. A quarter of the air quality-related health impacts of India's coal-powered electricity (~43,600 deaths/year) are from units that generate just 3.5% of the total energy.

Singh, K., Peshin, T., Sengupta, S., Thakrar, S.K., Tessum, C.W., Hill, J.D., Azevedo, IML, Luby, S.
Air pollution mortality from India’s coal power plants: unit-level estimates for targeted policy.
Environmental Research Letters. Paper

Updating air quality activity guidelines. Current US air quality activity guidelines (e.g., remaining indoors and avoiding exercise during high pollution episodes) are of questionable relevance as public health recommendations. We should have more targeted activity guidelines that only apply to the highest risk people, but we should not lose sight of the potential for more broadly-applied exposure-side interventions.

Thakrar, S.K. Time to review air quality activity guidelines. JAMA Network Open. Commentary

Air quality and vehicle electrification in India. Increased vehicle electrification in India will worsen air quality and health if the vehicles are powered by the current (coal-dominated) electricity grid. But transitioning to a cleaner grid alongside vehicle electrification can greatly improve air quality and health.

Peshin, T., Sengupta, S., Thakrar, S.K., Singh, K., Hill, J., Apte, J., Tessum, C., Marshall, J., Azevedo, I. Air quality, health, and equity impacts of vehicle electrification in India. Environmental Research Letters. Paper

Air quality and land-use decisions. Air quality health effects of land-use decisions are often larger in value than the carbon storage and agricultural returns combined.

Thakrar, S.K., Johnson, J.A., Polasky, S. Land-use decisions have substantial air quality health effects. Environmental Science & Technology. Paper, Research brief

2023

Nitrogen management for people and planet. Current nitrogen use in US Midwestern corn is net bad for society, leading to $21.3 billion annual losses. Better nitrogen management, through limiting reactive nitrogen emissions, lowering nitrogen input, and land retirement for the most unproductive and damaging corn, can turn these losses (almost) into gains.

Goodkind, A.L., Thakrar, S.K., Polasky, S., Hill, J.D., Tilman, G.D. Nitrogen management for societal gain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nexus. Paper

GTAP-InVEST. The integration of a computable general equilibrium model (GTAP) with a suite of ecosystem service models (InVEST) to model how the economy and the environment interact.

Johnson, J.A., Baldos, U.R., Corong, E., Hertel, T., Polasky, S., Cervigni, R., Roxburgh, T., Ruta, G., Salemi, C., Thakrar, S.K. Investing in nature can improve equity and economic returns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Paper

Sustainability science at the meso-scale. An emerging paradigm in sustainability science connects large-scale economic drivers of change (e.g., international trade, population dynamics) with small-scale environmental effects (e.g., crop yields, biodiversity indicators). But human decisions and the environment typically interact at the "meso-scale" (e.g., national or sub-national policies, agro-environmental management), which is often left out of the paradigm.

Johnson, J.A., Brown, M.E., Corong, E., Dietrich, J.P., Henry, R., v. Jeetze, P.J., Leclere, D., Popp, A., Thakrar, S.K., Williams, D.R. The meso-scale as a frontier in interdisciplinary modeling of sustainability from local to global scales. Environmental Research Letters. Paper

2022

Air quality and electricity generation in India. Poorer, coal-dependent states in eastern India are disproportionately burdened by air pollution health impacts from electricity generation. Sulfur emission controls reduce the burden by 50% throughout India, and lessen state-level inequalities. Carbon taxes and nationally integrated electricity markets reduce deaths by only ~10%, mostly in South India.

Sengupta, S., Thakrar, S., Singh, K., Tongia, R., Hill, J., Azevedo, I., Adams, P. Inequality in air pollution mortality from power generation in India. Environmental Research Letters. Paper

Air quality and electricity generation in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia expects to double electricity generation by 2040, increasing the share of coal-powered generation in the process, and thereby worsening air quality. Achieving the ASEAN High Renewable Energy Target is associated with 16,000 fewer deaths each year, relative to business-as-usual, by 2040.

Thakrar, S.*, Ravi, V.*, Heath, G., Wahyono, A.D., Suryadi, B., Avery, G., Hill, J. Quantifying impacts of renewable electricity deployment on air quality and human health in Southeast Asia based on AIMS III scenarios. Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Report, Fact sheet

Global InMAP. Development and evaluation of a global, open source, high-resolution, low-resource air quality model.

Thakrar, S.K., Tessum, C.W., Balasubramanian, S., Apte, J.S., Pandis, S.N., Marshall, J.D., Millet, D.B., Hill, J.D. Global, high-resolution, reduced-complexity air quality modeling for PM₂.₅ using InMAP (Intervention Model for Air Pollution). PLOS One. Paper, Data

2021

Air quality impacts of the global food system. Around a quarter of outdoor air quality-related deaths worldwide are attributable to the global food system. Emissions are from across the supply chain, and include the majority of anthropogenic primary fine particulate matter emissions.

Balasubramanian, S., Domingo, N.G.G., Hunt, N.D., Gittlin, M., Colgan, K.K., Marshall, J.D., Robinson, A.L., Azevedo, I.M.L., Thakrar, S., Clark, M.A., Tessum, C.W., Adams, P.J., Pandis, S.N., Hill, J.D. The food we eat, the air we breathe: A review of the fine particulate matter-induced air quality health impacts of the global food system. Environmental Research Letters. Paper, Media

Air quality and the United States food system. Attributing air quality-related deaths from agriculture to sources, food products, and diets, reveals that 80% of the ~16,000 food-related air quality deaths are from producing meat, dairy, and eggs. Even switching from an average diet to a flexitarian diet will reduce the deaths by 68%.

Domingo, N.G.G., Thakrar, S.K.*, Balasubramanian, S.*, Clark, M.A., Adams, P.J., Marshall, J.D., Muller, N.Z., Pandis, S.N., Polasky, S., Robinson, A.L., Tessum, C.W., Tilman, D., Tschofen, P., Hill, J.D. Air quality-related health damages of food. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Paper, Media

2020

Climate impacts of the global food system. Changes in the food system are necessary to meet our climate goals—--*even if* fossil fuel combustion is rapidly halted.

Clark, M., Domingo, N., Colgan, K., Thakrar, S., Tilman, D., Lynch, J., Azevedo, I., Hill, J. Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5°C and 2°C climate change targets. Science. Paper, Media

Climate and air quality impacts from diversifying cropping systems. Results from a long-term field experiment show that even adding one more small grain crop, like oats, to the dominant corn-soy rotation in the US Midwest can halve the life-cycle climate damages, air quality impacts, and fossil fuel use---all whilst maintaining farmer profits.

Hunt, N., Liebman, M., Thakrar, S., Hill, J. Fossil energy use, climate change impacts, and air quality-related human health damages of conventional and diversified cropping systems in Iowa, USA. Environmental Science & Technology. Paper, Media

Air quality impacts of every human-caused US emission source. This study breaks down the 100,000 deaths each year from human-caused air pollution in the US, attributing them to every single emission source. The deaths are not just from fossil fuels, not just from tailpipes and smokestacks, not just from regulated pollutants.

Thakrar, S.K., Balasubramanian, S., Adams, P.J., Azevedo, I.M.L., Muller, N.Z., Pandis, S.N., Polasky, S., Pope III, C.A., Robinson, A.L., Apte, J.S., Tessum, C.W., Marshall, J.D., Hill, J.D. Reducing Mortality from Air Pollution in the United States by Targeting Specific Emission Sources. Environmental Science & Technology Letters. Paper, Media

2019

Racial inequity and air pollution. Non-Hispanic white Americans, on average, induce more pollution exposure from their consumption than they are, on average, exposed to. The opposite is true for Hispanic and black Americans.

C.W. Tessum, J.S. Apte, A.L. Goodkind, N.Z. Muller K.A. Mullins, D.A. Paolella, S. Polasky, N. P. Springer, Sumil K. Thakrar, J.D. Marshall, J.D. Hill. Inequity in consumption of goods and services adds to racial–ethnic disparities in air pollution exposure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Paper, Media

Air quality impacts of US corn production. Life cycle corn production in the United States is associated with 4,300 deaths each year from changes in air quality alone.

Hill, J.D., Goodkind, A.L., Tessum, C.W., Thakrar, S.K., Tilman, G.D., Polasky, S., Smith, T.M., Hunt, N.D., Mullins, K.A., Clark, M., Marshall, J.D. Air-quality-related health damages of maize. Nature Sustainability. Paper, Media

2018

Air quality impacts of switchgrass production. To my knowledge, the first study to quantify how farmer decisions such as where to grow crops and how to fertilize them impact human health through changes in air pollution.

Thakrar, S.K., Goodkind, A.L., Tessum, C.W., Marshall, J.D., Hill, J.D. Life cycle air quality impacts on human health from potential switchgrass production in the United States. Biomass and Bioenergy. Paper, Data, Media

Sumil Thakrar 🌈