Beyond the Standards: Designer air quality in 2050

National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) are set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to protect human health and welfare. At their heart, however, these standards provide only a minimum level of protection. They do not represent a level of air quality to which most people and most communities aspire. With improved tools relating changes in air quality to emissions, and with a new long-term view, policy makers have new opportunities to achieve air quality that is desirable, rather than simply air quality that is mandated. Here we describe an inverse method that is used to determine the minimum change in current emissions needed to achieve a desired air quality result in the year 2050 for the Atlanta, GA metropolitan area.