Amanda Northcross
Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health
Dr. Northcross' research focuses on quantifying the impacts of air pollution and bridges environmental engineering, public health and environmental justice. With a background in environmental chemistry and engineering, she specializes in analyzing the chemical constituents of airborne pollutants and monitoring and assessing human exposures to cigarette smoke, cookstove pollution, and ambient air pollution. She also works to develop tools and methods that translate community experiences of environmental pollution into quantitative assessments.
Here in Washington, DC she along with colleagues and students are working with DC communities to develop a neighborhood based air quality monitoring network, the first of its kind in the region. Dr. Northcross's international collaborations have included a study in Guatemala quantifying the health effects of household air pollution from wood-fired cookstoves, and a randomized trial in Nigeria investigating whether replacing pregnant women's wood-fired cookstoves with clean-cooking ethanol stoves can reduce adverse pregnancy outcomes such as premature delivery and low birth weight. Currently she is working in North East Brazil in collaboration with local fishermen and women to assess the impacts of the neighboring petrochemical industry.