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How are Data Gaps Worked Around:

Sarnia, and the surrounding area around chemical valley, have 9 air monitoring stations in which air pollutants are monitored from the nearby petrochemical complex. Until 2017, only data from one of these stations (the one on Christina Street in downtown Sarnia) was publicly available. This created a gap in accessiblility of important data for sarnia and the nearby AFN residents. In September 2015, the Clean Air Sarnia and Area group launched as a "community advisory panel made up of representatives from the public, government, First Nations, and industry, who are dedicated to providing the community with a clear understanding of ambient air quality in the Sarnia area." This group works to improve air quality in Sarnia by making information about air quality publicly available and by making recommendations to relevant authorities. In 2018, this group launched the website: https://reporting.cleanairsarniaandarea.com/ (also uploaded as an artifact) which allows public to access data from the air quality monitoring stations and understand how air quality compares to Ontario's standards. This site works to fill the gap of publicly available air quality data in Sarnia.

This report from Ecojustice shows a decline in air pollution compared to Ecojustice's first report released in 2007 for the area around Chemical Valley, yet Sarnia industries continue "to release far more pollution, and in particular far more SO2 , than comparable U.S. refineries." One contributor to the continued excessive emissions is Ontario's lagging air quality standards. The report notes that "Ontario’s AAQC and air quality standards are lagging behind current science on the health impacts of air pollutants, which may put the health of residents at risk." The report highlights pollutants where Ontario's standard is above the national standard or where Ontario has no standard at all. Additionally, Sarnia's benzene emissions are exempt from Ontario's health-based standard for this chemical and are instead regulated by  "an industry technical-based standard" allowing benzene levels to be far higher than the health-based standard. The lagging, lack of, or exemption from regulation undercut efforts in monitoring and reducing emissions to a "safe" level as what is considered "safe" by standards is out of line with what is considered "safe" by health and other standards.

According to Google Scholar, this article has only been cited once. The publication's name is "Documenting Attacks on Health Workers and Facilities in Armed Conflicts." This publication discusses attacks on health facilities and workers in Afghanistan, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen.

The article's bibliography contains many references including the WHO, the Red Cross, and other organizations, as well as many other experts and professionals in the field. 

The authors range from a variety of institutions including: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden, Karolinska Institute in Sweden, Fafo Research Institute in Norway, and King's College London in the UK. The main author, Ludvig Foghammar, seems to have a lot of knowledge in economics, political science, and global health (according to his LinkedIn). He has served as Officer for European Affairs for the Swedish Embassy in Vienna, and a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. 

The methods used in this paper include interviews from 11 different representatives of organizations working in complex security environments, information from research workshops that included researchers and practitioners in the fields of health and humanitarian aid delivery and policy, and overall analysis of organizational efforts made to address this type of violence.

They also use many examples of situations in which violence against humanitarian workers and facilities occurred. 

The authors discuss that there is little information regarding this topic because there is a lack of research. This is pointed out by the fact that they could only find 38 articles that related to this topic. They also point out that there is an urgency for an analysis regarding the impact of this violence on the facilities, organizations, and on the populations that benefitted from the humanitarian presence. 

The argument is supported through examples of violence, interviews, and insight into the ways in which research is lacking in this field.

1. "At the same time, academic research is often communicated in a format that fails to address the critical policy issues facing aid organizations."
2. "Because reporting often focuses on the most serious attacks, such as kidnapping and fatalities, workshop participants stressed that incidents perceived to be less severe, such as threats and obstructions, are more likely to be underreported. For this reason it is important to better understand the impact of perceived threats."
3. "Workshop participants also noted examples of violence linked to situations where the medical treatment provided has not met patients’ expectations or was unsatisfactory in other ways."
4. "Although violence directly affecting health service delivery in complex security environments has received a great deal of media attention, there is very little publically available research, particularly peer-reviewed, original research. Only thirty-eight articles met the original search criteria outlined in the methods section, of which only eleven contained original research; a further citation search yielded another four original research articles. The remainder was comprised of review articles, commentaries, letters, or analysis based on secondary sources."