About

Christopher Tessum is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois. His research group assesses air pollution-related effects of human activity, focusing on mechanistic modeling of outdoor air pollution and its health impacts. His work involves studying the relationships between emissions, human activities that cause them, and the resulting health impacts, as well as developing modeling capabilities to enable these analyses. His research emphasizes atmospheric modeling, impact assessment, and leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve existing models and generate new insights. Key areas of his work include creating stable, interpretable, and mass-conserving AI models for air pollution modeling, evaluating the environmental equity impacts of decarbonization, and addressing the disproportionate effects of air pollution on communities of color in the United States.

Research topics

• Environmental health
• Geography
• Medicine
• Environmental science
• Meteorology
• Political Science
• Ecology
• Environmental protection
• Waste management
• Biology
• Natural resource economics
• Engineering
• Demography
• Economics
• Psychology
• Environmental planning
• Physics
• Environmental resource management
• Business

Selected publications

• Air quality policy should quantify effects on disparities

  Science · 2023 · 63 citations

  • Environmental science
  • Environmental health
  • Geography

  New tools can guide US policies to better target and reduce racial and socioeconomic disparities in air pollution exposure

  PublisherDOI

• Wildfire, Smoke Exposure, Human Health, and Environmental Justice Need to be Integrated into Forest Restoration and Management

  Current Environmental Health Reports · 2022 · 144 citations

  • Environmental health
  • Environmental planning
  • Environmental resource management

  PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Increasing wildfire size and severity across the western United States has created an environmental and social crisis that must be approached from a transdisciplinary perspective. Climate change and more than a century of fire exclusion and wildfire suppression have led to contemporary wildfires with more severe environmental impacts and human smoke exposure. Wildfires increase smoke exposure for broad swaths of the US population, though outdoor workers and socially disadvantaged groups with limited adaptive capacity can be disproportionally exposed. Exposure to wildfire smoke is associated with a range of health impacts in children and adults, including exacerbation of existing respiratory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, worse birth outcomes, and cardiovascular events. Seasonally dry forests in Washington, Oregon, and California can benefit from ecological restoration as a way to adapt forests to climate change and reduce smoke impacts on affected communities. RECENT FINDINGS: Each wildfire season, large smoke events, and their adverse impacts on human health receive considerable attention from both the public and policymakers. The severity of recent wildfire seasons has state and federal governments outlining budgets and prioritizing policies to combat the worsening crisis. This surging attention provides an opportunity to outline the actions needed now to advance research and practice on conservation, economic, environmental justice, and public health interests, as well as the trade-offs that must be considered. Scientists, planners, foresters and fire managers, fire safety, air quality, and public health practitioners must collaboratively work together. This article is the result of a series of transdisciplinary conversations to find common ground and subsequently provide a holistic view of how forest and fire management intersect with human health through the impacts of smoke and articulate the need for an integrated approach to both planning and practice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sources of ambient PM2.5 exposure in 96 global cities

  Atmospheric Environment · 2022 · 54 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Environmental science
  • Geography
  • Environmental protection

  exposure caused by within-city emissions varies widely (μ = 37%; σ = 22%) and is not well-explained by surrounding population density. The list of most-important sources also varies by city. Compared to a more mechanistically detailed model, InMAP predicts urban measured concentrations with lower bias and error but also lower correlation. Predictive accuracy in urban areas is not particularly high with either model, suggesting an opportunity for improving global urban air emission inventories. We expect the results herein can be useful as a screening tool for policy options and, in the absence of available resources for further analysis, to inform policy action to improve public health.

  PublisherDOI

• PM _2.5 polluters disproportionately and systemically affect people of color in the United States

  Science Advances · 2021 · 574 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Geography
  • Environmental health

  exposure disparity experienced by people of color. We identify the most inequitable emission source types by state and city, thereby highlighting potential opportunities for addressing this persistent environmental inequity.

  DOI

• 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 · 2021 · 56 citations

  • Environmental science
  • Environmental health
  • Environmental protection

  The global food system is essential for the health and wellbeing of society, but is also a major cause of environmental damage. Some impacts, such as on climate change, have been the subject of intense recent inquiry, but others, such as on air quality, are not as well understood. Here, we systematically synthesize the literature to identify the impacts on ambient PM _2.5 (particulate matter with diameter ⩽2.5 μ m), which is the strongest contributor to premature mortality from exposure to air pollution. Our analysis indicates that the life-cycle of the global food system (pre-production, production, post-production, consumption and waste management) accounts for 58% of anthropogenic, global emissions of primary PM _2.5 , 72% of ammonia (NH _3 ), 13% of nitrogen oxides (NO _x ), 9% of sulfur dioxide (SO _2 ), and 19% of non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC). These emissions result in at least 890 000 ambient PM _2.5 -related deaths, which is equivalent to 23% of ambient PM _2.5 -related deaths reported in the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015. Predominant contributors include livestock and crop production, which contribute >50% of food-related NH _3 emissions, and land-use change and waste burning, which contribute up to 95% of food-related primary PM _2.5 emissions. These findings are largely underestimated given the paucity of data from the post-production and consumption stages, total underestimates in NH _3 emissions, lack of sector-scale analysis of PM _2.5 -related deaths in South America and Africa, and uncertainties in integrated exposure-response functions. In addition, we identify mitigation opportunities—including shifts in food demand, changes in agricultural practices, the adoption of clean and low-energy technologies, and policy actions—that can facilitate meeting food demand with minimal PM _2.5 impacts. Further research is required to resolve sectoral-scale, region-specific contributions to PM _2.5 -related deaths, and assess the efficiency of mitigation strategies. Our review is positioned to inform stakeholders, including scientists, engineers, policymakers, farmers and the public, of the health impacts of reduced air quality resulting from the global food system.

  PublisherDOI

• Air quality–related health damages of food

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 182 citations

  • Political Science
  • Environmental health
  • Business

  emissions from tillage, field burning, livestock dust, and machinery. Dietary shifts toward more plant-based foods that maintain protein intake and other nutritional needs could reduce agricultural air quality-related mortality by 68 to 83%. In sum, improved livestock and fertilization practices, and dietary shifts could greatly decrease the health impacts of agriculture caused by its contribution to reduced air quality.

  DOI

• Reducing Mortality from Air Pollution in the United States by Targeting Specific Emission Sources

  Environmental Science & Technology Letters · 2020 · 157 citations

  • Environmental science
  • Natural resource economics
  • Environmental protection

  Air quality in the United States has dramatically improved, yet exposure to air pollution is still associated with 100000–200000 deaths annually. Reducing the number of deaths effectively, efficiently, and equitably relies on attributing them to specific emission sources, but so far, this has been done for only highly aggregated groups of sources, or a select few sources of interest. Here, we estimate mortality in the United States attributable to all domestic, human-caused emissions of primary PM2.5 and secondary PM2.5 precursors. We present detailed source-specific attributions in four alternate groupings relevant for identifying promising ways to reduce mortality. We find that nearly half of the deaths can be attributed to just five activities, all in different sectors. Around half of the deaths can be attributed to fossil fuel combustion, with the remainder attributable to combustion of nonfossil fuels, agricultural processes, and other noncombustion processes. Both primary and secondary PM2.5 are important, including PM2.5 from currently unregulated precursor pollutants such as ammonia. We suggest improvements in air quality can be realized by continued reductions of emissions from traditionally important sources and by novel strategies for reducing emissions from sources of emerging relative importance and research focus. Such changes can contribute to improved health outcomes and other environmental goals.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Julian Marshall

  Seattle University

  82 shared

• Jason Hill

  University of Minnesota

  56 shared

• Joshua S. Apte

  University of California, Berkeley

  28 shared

• Sotiria Koloutsou‐Vakakis

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  26 shared

• Hadi Meidani

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  26 shared

• Eleftheria Kontou

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  26 shared

• Lei Zhao

  25 shared

• Spyros Ν. Pandis

  University of Patras

  20 shared

Labs

• Tessum Research GroupPI

Education

• Ph.D., Civil Engineering

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2007

• M.S., Civil Engineering

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2003

• B.S., Civil Engineering

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2001

Awards & honors

• Tessum wins GeoHealth Early Career Award from AGU
• Tessum wins NSF CAREER Award (2024)

Similar researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Jiawei Hanh-146
• Maria T. Grosse Perdekamph-141
• Gan Zhangh-134
• Jeffrey S. Mooreh-130
• Shuming Nieh-128