Gary Fuller

Gary Fuller joined KCL in 1994, and has since led the development of the London Air Quality Network to become the largest urban network in Europe.

Dr Fuller has pursued network data analysis techniques to characterise trends and changes in urban air pollution. Much of this research is focused on the source apportionment of PM10 concentrations; again using a network perspective to create simple models to separate trends in primary PM concentrations from sources in London from changes in PM imported from outside the city; from Europe and beyond. This led to the important finding that primary PM10 in London has increased since 1998 despite technological and policy measures to abate vehicle tailpipe emissions (Fuller and Green, 2006). These apportionment techniques can also be applied to quantify the local impacts of PM arising from sources that are not currently represented in emissions inventories including construction activity (Fuller and Green, 2004), waste management and more recent measurement programmes have focused on PM10 from biomass burning.

Dr Fuller's studies of PM concentrations in residential streets around six urban waste management sites have led to development of further apportionment techniques to support the regulatory activities of the Environment Agency and local authorities. New measurement of PM chemical composition is providing improved opportunities to characterise PM10 by source leading to a better understanding of ambient air pollution concentrations (Green and Fuller, 2009) and their sources. Other recent work has included the incorporation of the GUM measurement approaches to uncertainty assessment into source apportionment models.

Through close working with toxicologists, clinicians and epidemiologists it has been possible to promote the best use of air pollution measurements in health studies (Atkinson et al, 2010 for example) working towards a better characterisation of pollutant exposure.