JG wrote:
"UCLA scientists have found that people who live and work near Santa
Monica Airport are exposed to high levels of air pollution -- a
significant health concern that has been largely associated with major
commercial airports such as LAX.

The study appears to be online here (not just the abstract):

http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/...5f?cookieSet=1

According to it (section 3.3.2) it appears a heavy-duty diesel truck and
a jet taking off yield nearly identical particle concentrations. It would
seem that the neighbors are in the same situation as if they had moved near
a commercial site that had large trucks coming and going and the neigbors
got together to shut down the commercial site.

For comparison, I did a quick search for comparable studies on ultrafine
particle emissions near major roads. I only picked out just one that seemed
comparable (also LA area):

http://sunscreamer.com/publiccomment...9%20405Fwy.pdf

Figure 4(c) (90 m downwind) and 4(f) (300 m upwind) seem to indicate that an
exposure factor about 17 times greater than background (comparing the peaks
in fig 4(c) and 4(f) and dividing: 1.0E5 / 6.0E3) Comparable to the airport
study finding a factor of about 10 for about the same distance from the source.

As far as I can tell, the numbers seem to indicate that living near a busy
airport is about as dangerous as living near a major highway with respect to
ultrafine particle emissions. It seems that demanding that aircraft takeoffs
be reduced or shut down entirely at an airport would be equivalent to
demanding that the number of vehicles on a major highway be reduced or
shut down. The options to neighbors appears to be roughly the same in
both cases.