SEE’s Meenar honored for outstanding community engagement in Camden air quality project

Long committed to improving environmental conditions in Camden, Mahbubur Meenar, Ph.D., will receive the Outstanding Community Engagement Award from the American Planning Association’s New Jersey Chapter during the group’s awards ceremony in December for a groundbreaking initiative.

Meenar, an associate professor of planning in the Department of Geography, Planning & Sustainability within the School of Earth & Environment, and director of the Community Planning + Visualization Lab, led “Greening Camden: Educating, Empowering and Enriching Communities for Climate Action and Cleaner Air.”

The two-year project (which concludes next August) addresses the city’s long-standing air quality challenges through education, advocacy and participatory science.

Meenar said Camden County consistently ranks poorly in air quality measures taken by the American Lung Association, but Camden City – dense with industry, aging infrastructure, and heavy traffic – often has some of the worst air quality in the state.

“Camden City and Gloucester City have notoriously poor air quality,” Meenar said. “But, air quality fluctuates, and on certain days it can be moderate or even good.”

Alongside persistent air quality issues from heavy traffic and industry, air within the city has been worsened at times by fires, including at a metal recycler last spring that forced around 100 residents to evacuate, Meenar said.

Residents link these environmental conditions to a variety of health issues including asthma, chronic coughing, and breathing difficulties.

To quantify them, Meenar’s team of faculty, students and residents launched a participatory science project in which 40 residents received handheld air monitors to measure fine particulate matter small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs. Participants logged data for two weeks last summer, creating a real-time map of air quality across the city.

“We wanted residents to have evidence that they could use for advocacy,” Meenar said.

Preliminary findings revealed alarming spikes in hazardous air quality. Though the study was short-term, its data provide a foundation for future research and policy discussions.

“We know that air changes constantly,” Meenar said. “To fully understand patterns, we need long-term studies.”

Beyond data collection, Greening Camden engaged more than 200 residents through tree-planting events, park cleanups, gardening workshops and community forums. The project also produced educational materials, including recorded workshops, course modules, a coloring book for students and a Greening Camden toolkit. Meenar said 20 students from his Rowan Planning Studio and others – two undergraduates and three graduate researchers – supported these efforts alongside five community partners for the study, which was funded by a $100,000 EPA grant and $20,000 from TD Bank’s Green Jobs Academy.

The project resonated deeply with longtime resident and former city councilwoman Shaneka Boucher, whose daughter, when she was six, suffered an acute asthma attack that Boucher believed was related to poor air quality.

“A close friend lost her son to an asthma attack,” Boucher said. “The hardest part is knowing (in my heart) that the industries causing this are right in my backyard.”

Along with Meenar, the project director, core team members included Elizabeth Cerceo, M.D., Jagadish Torlapati, Ph.D., Qian He, Ph.D., and Ben Saracco along with collaborators Megan Bucknum, Richard Federman, Ted Howell, Ph.D., John Mullen, Ph.D., Ashley York, Ph.D., Marie Casanova, Carla Richards, Ph.D., Lou Thomas, Ph.D. and Mina Zarfsaz.

To learn more about the project and to view photos, visit https://www.planviz.org/greening-camden.