Michael Claggett is an environmental engineer whose specialty is designing studies to assess the effects of transportation projects and industrial plants on ambient air quality and public health. He has conducted research on the accuracy and precision of air quality models used nationally to predict concentrations near highways and industrial sources. He has developed and taught workshops and graduate-level courses on air quality modeling. Dr. Claggett has worked for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) as the Resource Center Technical Director of the Environment, Air Quality and Realty Team, the Resource Center Air Quality Team Leader, and as an air quality modeling specialist. Prior to joining FHWA, he worked as an air quality consultant. His clients included State Departments of Transportation (DOTs), private industry, and governmental agencies.
Dr. Claggett has performed numerous air quality impact assessments for State DOTs to satisfy the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Clean Air Act, and project-level conformity on Federal-aid highway projects; along with urban mobile source emission inventories as part of the transportation planning process and regional transportation conformity assessments. He has also worked on a variety of ambient air and meteorological monitoring investigations. He has conducted various air dispersion modeling studies of hazardous air pollutants for industry including supporting human health and ecological risk assessments; demonstrating compliance with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state regulations on hazardous air pollutants; and emergency response planning. He has provided expert testimony in court cases and licensing hearings. Dr. Claggett has international experience in air quality modeling, having conducted studies in England, Italy, Hong Kong, and Russia and making technical presentations at international workshops and conferences in China and Canada.
Articles by Dr. Claggett have appeared in several professional journals including Atmospheric Environment and the Transportation Research Record and several professional magazines, including TR News and EM Magazine. He co-authored two chapters in the EPA’s 1979 update of Air Quality Criteria for Carbon Monoxide and was a contributing author to a 1982 Report to Congress on Implications of a 0.4 gram/mile NOx Emission Standard for Light Duty Vehicles.