Human‐Centered Monitoring of Asphalt Emissions: Linking Exposure, Climate, and Health

Abstract

ABSTRACT Urban infrastructure shapes environmental quality not only through its form and function but also through the materials from which it is built. Asphalt is a prominent example: heat, solar radiation, and aging can amplify emissions from this climate‐responsive, chemically active material. However, urban air‐quality frameworks continue to treat these emissions as diffuse ambient burdens, overlooking their role as localized, episodic exposure events with potential implications for community health, occupational safety, and functional performance. This review synthesizes evidence across materials science, atmospheric chemistry, exposure science, toxicology, and human factors to propose a unified, human‐centered monitoring framework that links asphalt emission dynamics to exposure conditions, biological relevance, and functional human‐response endpoints. We identify three gaps that motivate the framework: (1) weak integration between emission chemistry, chemical changes and reactions, and real‐world exposure conditions, (2) insufficient monitoring resolution to capture short‐duration, source‐proximate, high‐intensity events, and (3) limited coupling of exposure data with repeated human response measurements and functional endpoints such as symptoms, perception, cognition, and behavior. By organizing these gaps within a single monitoring logic, the framework can guide future efforts to identify who is exposed, under what environmental conditions, and with what potential health or functional relevance. This structure provides a pathway toward more health‐protective infrastructure design, construction practices, and governance. This need is particularly relevant in rapidly urbanizing, arid, and hot‐climate regions, where persistent thermal forcing may amplify both material emissions and human exposure. Although the evidence synthesized in this review focuses primarily on asphalt, the source–exposure–response framework may be transferable to other climate‐sensitive infrastructure materials as part of broader efforts to advance healthier, more adaptive, and more sustainable urban environments.