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Air Quality in Pakistan


[Dr. Filippelli Giving a Lecture at the National Institute of Health, Islamabad]

Greater awareness of the negative impacts of air pollution on public health has made this a prime issue in many countries. Pakistan currently has almost no air quality monitoring capabilities, so it is difficult to assess the true impacts of air quality on health and nearly impossible to determine and eradicate the sources of air pollution. In line with a continued USG policy of constructing air quality monitoring facilities on Embassies and Posts in vulnerable countries, the posts in Pakistan are bringing several testing facilities online. Dr. Filippelli, an Air Quality Fellow for Embassy Islamabad and an expert in air quality and health, delivered a series of lectures, workshops, and demonstrations to raise awareness of these issues and to build dialogs among university researchers, students, governmental, and non-governmental entities on this issue.  Through this AIPS-sponsored series of events, which occurred in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad, Dr. Filippelli interacted with approximately 1000 people over 11 days.


[Dinner Reception at Gymkhana, Lahore in Honor of Dr. Filippelli]

Scholar Bio
Dr. Gabriel Filippelli is a Professor of Earth Sciences and Directs the Center for Urban Health at Indiana University. Filippelli is a biogeochemist with broad training in marine and terrestrial systems, as well as pollutant exposure and human health studies. Filippelli has published broadly, including publications in Science, Nature and Geology as well as in specialty journals and in popular press as a science blogger. He has personally directed over $5M of research funding over his career, and is currently a co-PI on a $55M award for Indiana University Prepared for Environmental Change Grand Challenge initiative. He has served as Associate Editor and Guest Editor of multiple journals, and is currently the Editor-in-Chief for the journal GeoHealth, published by the American Geophysical Union.

Filippelli is a Fellow of the International Association of Geochemistry, is an Air Quality Fellow for the Pakistan Embassy for the U.S. Department of State, and is a former National Academy of Sciences Jefferson Fellow, where he served as a Senior Science Advisor for the State Department, with a policy portfolio including Science Cooperation in the Arctic, Antarctic climate change, and Marine Debris and Plastics. The latter activity included being the State Department’s chief contact for the Interagency Working Group on this topic, as well as serving as a delegate to several Marine Debris Meetings of the United Nations Environment Program and conducting an Education and Outreach mission to U.S. Embassies in South Africa and Namibia.

For a more complete overview of this program, find the final report here