Charlie Stanier

Research Interests:
Laboratory investigation and field sampling of air pollution, particularly of aerosol particles. Computation simulations to elucidate questions of atmospheric, aerosol chemistry, and the health effects of airborne contaminants. Some ongoing projects are described below.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Understanding the Chemistry, Meteorology, and Effects of Atmospheric New Particle Formation
The creation of new particles from gas-to-particle partitioning, or aerosol homogeneous nucleation, is a critical atmospheric process. Together with other key processes (primary particle emission, coagulation, deposition, and scavenging), nucleation maintains the number concentration of particles around the globe. Of these, nucleation is the least understood. Nucleation is known to occur when supersaturated gases form stable condensed phase clusters, thought to be in the nanometer size range, and then grow to sizes that are detectable by current instrumentation (~3 nm). Since nucleation competes with condensation to transfer material from the gas phase, nucleation is favored under clean conditions where there is limited surface area for condensation.
However, many recent studies at have observed new particle formation in more polluted sites than expected and this phenomenon has not been successfully included in air quality models. My research interest in this area is to test and refine our current conceptual model of new particle formation over North America by combining model-based predictions with physical and chemical field measurements.

Organics Aerosols: Field Sampling and Laboratory Characterization of Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Formation
In many locations around the globe, carbonaceous materials make up a large fraction of the fine aerosol mass. Much of this carbonaceous material was originally emitted in the gas phase and later made its way to the aerosol phase via a combination of chemical reaction and adsorption/absorption. The underlying surface that forms the target or core for condensation of carbonaceous materials has an influence on the properties and formation of the condensed phase. It is our group’s interest to devise novel experimental techniques to characterize and understand these surface-semivolatile interactions and therefore improve models that rely on aerosol chemistry (climate and regional haze models).
We also seek to develop and deploy sampling techniques, analytical methods, and computational models to characterize the organic fraction of the aerosol not in terms of traditional metrics (e.g. organic aerosol mass, molecular makeup by gas chromatography), but in terms of metrics that are useful to understanding the health and climate effects of the organic aerosol (optical properties, role as surfactants, degree of polymerization, volatility, concentrations of biomolecules such as carbohydrates, proteins, allergens, and humic-like substances, hygroscopicity, and toxicity).

Quantifying and Managing Source-Receptor Relationships for Ultrafine and Nanoscale Materials
Air pollution and atmospheric particles have long been known to cause adverse health effects for short-term exposures. In the past 3 decades, there has been a growing consensus that air pollution is a serious chronic health problem in many areas of the globe – from polluted developed cities such as Los Angeles, to moderately polluted regions such as the Northeast U.S., to rapidly growing Megacities throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
One intriguing hypothesis is that some ultrafine aerosols have particularly serious health consequences (the evidence is most convincing for diesel particulates). Just as scientists, doctors, and engineers begin to figure out the health consequences of current levels of ultrafine pollution, environmental concentrations of ultrafine and nanoscale material may change due to changes in economic activity, air pollution regulations, and developments in combustion, transport, and energy technologies. Examples of these drivers include changes in fuel sulfur content for diesel engines, the Clean Air Act and Clear Skies Initiatives to reduce fine particulate mass, and the use of particulate filters in diesel engines. As an additional uncertainty in the ultrafine health effects problem, manufactured nanomaterials are expected to growth several-fold in the near future. These materials may (or may not) have sufficient toxicity and environmental mobility to “leak” into the environment in cause adverse health and/or ecological effects.

My research goal is support society’s efforts to understand and manage these potential health effects by constructing computational source-receptor and exposure models for ultrafine aerosols and nanoscale materials. This will be extensively supported by field measurements, and used for the prediction of human exposures and their changes due to changes in precursor emissions, combustion technologies, and the growth of nanomaterial use.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Selected Publications

Stanier, C., Khlystov, A., and Pandis, S.N. “Nucleation Events during the Pittsburgh Air Quality Study: Description and Relation to Key Meteorological, Gas Phase, and Aerosol Parameters.” Aerosol Science and Technology 2004, 38(S1): 253-264.

Stanier, C., Khlystov, A., Chan, W.R., Mandiro, M., and Pandis, S.N. “A Method for the In-situ Measurement of Fine Aerosol Water Content of Ambient Aerosol: the Dry-Ambient Aerosol Size Spectrometer (DAASS).” Aerosol Science and Technology 2004, 38(S1): 215-228.

Stanier, C., Khlystov, A., and Pandis, S.N. “Ambient Aerosol Size Distributions and Particle Number Concentrations Measured during the Pittsburgh Air Quality Study.” Atmospheric Environment 2004, 38: 3275-3284.

Khlystov, A., Stanier, C., and Pandis, S.N. “An Algorithm for Combining Electrical Mobility and Aerodynamic Size Distribution Data when Measuring Ambient Aerosol.” Aerosol Science and Technology 2004, 38(S1): 229-238.

Zhou, L., Kim, E., Hopke, P.K., Stanier, C., and Pandis, S.N. “Advanced Factor Analysis on Pittsburgh Particle Size Distribution Data.” Aerosol Science and Technology 2004, 38(S1): 118-132.

Rees, S., Robinson, A., Khlystov, A., Stanier, C., and Pandis, S.N. “Mass Balance Closure and the Federal Reference Method for PM2.5 in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.” Atmospheric Environment 2004, 28(20): 3305-3318.

Zhang, Q., Stanier, C., Caragaratna, M., Jayne, J.T., Worsnop, D., Pandis, S.N., Jimenez, J.L. “Insights into the Chemistry of Nucleation Bursts and Particle Growth Events in Pittsburgh Based on Aerosol Mass Spectrometry.” Environmental Science and Technology 2004, doi:10.1021/es035417u.

Lipsky, E., Stanier, C., and Pandis, S.N., and Robinson, A.L. “Effects of Sampling Conditions on the Size Distribution of Fine Particulate Matter Emitted From a Pilot-Scale Pulverized-Coal Combustor.” Energy and Fuels 2002, 16(2): 302-310.