Quantifying air quality co-benefits to industrial decarbonization: the local Air Emissions Tracking Atlas.

Introduction: Many decarbonization technologies have the added co-benefit of reducing short-lived climate pollutants, such as particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and sulfur dioxide (SO2), creating a unique opportunity for identifying strategies that promote both climate change solutions and opportunities for air quality improvement. However, stakeholders and decision-makers may struggle to quantify how these co-benefits will impact public health for the communities most affected by industrial air pollution. Methods: To address this problem, the LOCal Air Emissions Tracking Atlas (LOCAETA) fills a data availability and analysis gap by providing estimated air quality benefits from industrial decarbonization options, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS). These co-benefits are calculated using an algorithm that connects disparate datasets that separately report greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants at U.S. industrial facilities. Results: Version 1.0 of LOCAETA displays the estimated primary PM2.5 emission reduction co-benefits from additional pretreatment equipment for CCS on industrial and power facilities across the state of Louisiana, as well as the potential for VOC and NH3 generation. The emission reductions are presented in the tool alongside facility pollutant emissions information and relevant air quality, environmental, demographic, and public health datasets, such as air toxics cancer risk, satellite and in situ pollutant measurements, and population vulnerability metrics. Discussion: LOCAETA enables regulators, policymakers, environmental justice communities, and industrial and commercial users to compare and contrast quantifiable public health benefits due to air quality impacts from various climate change mitigation strategies using a free and publicly-available tool. Additional pollutant reductions can be calculated using the same methodology and will be available in future versions of the tool.

Immune regulation and graft survival in kidney transplant recipients are both enhanced by human leukocyte antigen matching.

We hypothesized that donor/recipient sharing of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) involved in allopeptide presentation to the T regulatory cell increases the incidence of immune regulation, thus contributing to long-term graft survival. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) were obtained from 40 living related donor (LRD) and 31 cadaver renal transplant recipients. The trans vivo delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) assay was used to assign patients to regulator, nonregulator, and sensitized categories. In a large cohort (n=1934 patients), primary graft survival and rejection episodes were analyzed using a log rank test for comparison with the DTH results. The highest incidence of regulated anti-donor DTH was observed in the LRD HLA-identical group (6/6; 100%) followed by the LRD HLA 1 haplotype matched group (18/27; 67%). Within the cadaver population, two DR-matched recipients had a higher frequency of regulated anti-donor DTH (6/11; 55%) than 1 & 0 DR-matched recipients (3/18; 17%). In a multivariate model, matching for HLA-DR alone, or for DR plus DQ was significantly (p=0.045, p=0.041) correlated with DTH regulation. The better HLA-matched groups showed the highest incidence of DTH regulation and, in a larger retrospective analysis, displayed better graft survival and freedom from acute rejection (p<0.0001). HLA matching, and HLA-DR matching in particular, correlates with the incidence of immune regulation after kidney transplantation.