UC Berkeley PhD candidate Emma Lasky on the intersection of climate change, infrastructure, and public health
Emma Lasky, PhD candidate in landscape architecture and environmental planning, discusses her multidisciplinary research on how climate change-induced groundwater rise presents urgent challenges for public health and environmental policy.
Tell us a little about what drew you to the PhD program in Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley.
I was in the Master of Public Health program at Berkeley and met Iryna Dronova, associate professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning, who recommended applying for the doctoral program. I realized my interests aligned with the department, specifically how the built environment interacts with ecological systems and human health in the context of climate change.
The work of Kristina Hill, another professor in the department, closely aligns with my own research and personal interests, particularly her interest in the Bay Area, as well as places like Hawaii, where a lot of my family is from, and in Scandinavia, where my sister lives. Kristina and I clicked when we realized we both prioritize public health and environmental justice in our research, which is a big driver for my eagerness to have her as my advisor.
The primary reason I wanted to get a PhD was so that I could dig deeper into the theory behind how we conduct scientific analyses, and uncover subconscious and methodological biases that influence quantitative research. A big part of that, for me, is critiquing how baselines, standards, and assumptions are created and defined. Specifically, how they are developed from a public health and policy perspective, how planners determine who is exposed to (un)favorable environmental conditions, and what level of exposure to harmful environmental substances is acceptable.
You and Professor Hill recently published a paper about groundwater rise and pollution along the Richmond shoreline?
Before we began the paper [“Seasonal variation of volatilized tetrachloroethene and trichloroethene concentrations in sewer systems in contaminated coastal landscapes,” Environmental Pollution 395 (15 April 2026)], Professor Hill and I began collaborating on research at Richmond Field Station in collaboration with Richmond Shoreline Alliance via UCSF’s REACH program, an initiative that trains health professionals and community leaders to use science to inform environmental health policy. While in the REACH program, we applied for and received a California Breast Cancer Research Program grant to support our air sampling research at the Richmond Field Station.
Using the Richmond Field Station as our study site, we aimed to investigate our hypothesis that potentially hazardous contaminants known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs — like TCE [trichloroethylene] and PCE [tetrachloroethylene] — could enter sewer systems because of rising groundwater. We used seasonality as a proxy for sea level rise because the shallow, unconfined coastal groundwater table can be influenced by physical processes like heavy precipitation or tidal effects, storm surges, and sea level rise.
The hypothesis we were trying to confirm was: Heavy precipitation positively influences the presence of carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting compounds into homes and buildings because of this preferential pathway known as vapor intrusion.
How do you define vapor intrusion?
Vapor intrusion is the permeation of highly volatile chemical vapors (chloroform, benzene, tetrachloroethene, vinyl chloride, etc.) into indoor environments from contaminated soil and groundwater into or through utility corridors, cracked building foundations, and sewer systems connected to or beneath indoor spaces.
Okay, so what did your research show?
We sampled sewer laterals and indoor air three times: once in the dry season, which was in October, and twice in the wet season, in January and February. We found that there were greater concentrations of both TCE and PCE in the sewer systems during the wet season versus the dry season in nearly all of the sampled sewer laterals, which confirms our hypothesis that there are higher concentrations of TCE and PCE in the wet season versus the dry season.
The implication of our research is that if plumbing in indoor environments connected to these contaminated sewers aren’t properly maintained, carcinogenic compounds may enter into these buildings. People could be unknowingly exposed to VOCs that can cause serious health issues. That’s why we got funding from the California Breast Cancer Program, because there’s some evidence that TCE, PCE, and other VOCs can increase the risk of breast cancer.
How do you translate complex environmental and public health research into actionable policy?
You have to adjust the language for your audience. For federal or state agencies, I try to explain my research clearly, in a way that is helpful for policymakers and planners to make informed decisions based on raw but clear-cut facts.
If I’m talking to an audience with a public health background, then I concentrate more on the public health aspects such as major risk to human health associated with exposure to VOCs and the social implications associated with those risks. When I’m talking to civil engineering folks, I talk more about the infrastructure and the built environment and how that can be a pathway for intrusion.
I try to attend academic conferences, state agency meetings, and community discussions to share my research. Speaking about this research with a diverse collection of agencies, organizations, and communities is necessary to ensure our findings reach beyond just academics. The most I can do is provide scientific evidence of what’s happening and try to encourage people to consider it in their respective endeavors.
What do you want policymakers, planners, landscape architects, and others to take away from this research?
The California Department of Toxic Substances includes a sea level and groundwater rise in their assessments of contaminated sites in need of remediation. Other groups like EPA and the Regional Water Quality Control Board do similar sorts of assessments, but they’re not including groundwater rise in the same way. Beyond the U.S., only a few countries consider groundwater rise in their climate change assessments. Groundwater rise has been considered in past studies, but not necessarily how contamination may travel in the groundwater and the implications that could have on the health of nearby communities.
Professor Hill and I recently published a vapor intrusion and public health screening method [“Sea-level and groundwater rise increase the potential for indoor exposure to volatile organic compounds near contaminated sites”]. This screening tool can be used by public health and cleanup agencies to assess what current and future populations may be exposed to VOCs via vapor intrusion in coastal settings. This work was a multiyear effort involving collaboration between researchers from multiple universities.
I am proud of this screening tool and I hope policymakers, planners, and others can utilize the tool in their respective assessments and development plans.
What should public health departments be aware of?
It’s important for public health departments to be aware that this can occur inside homes, hospitals, and buildings near these contaminated sites. On a national scale, there are around 48,000 contaminated sites along coastlines at risk of flooding from sea level rise. If those are at risk of flooding from sea level rise, that means they may already be experiencing groundwater rise. People are aware of vapor intrusion as a problem, but maybe not so much how groundwater rise associated with suspension of contamination may impact public health in the area.
For example, someone from the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation reached out about the possibility of including our paper in the Fifth Climate Change Assessment, which is really big. California is a global leader in climate change initiatives. When other states or countries are looking for guidance on their own climate change assessments, they can see our research and adopt our theories and methods into their own assessment procedures.
Anything else you’d like to share?
This research is just one step in this multiyear endeavor that I’ve been working on with Kristina Hill. We have ambitions of integrating this work into California state policy and beyond. For example, I’m going to Vienna for the European Geophysical Union Conference in May. My hope is to bring this idea and information to a global community — connecting and building this research on an international level would be awesome.