Assessment of personal and residential outdoor fine particulate matter exposure using low-cost sensors in a long-Covid patient population

Assessment of Personal and Residential Outdoor Fine Particulate Matter Exposure Using Low-Cost Sensors in a Long-Covid Patient Population

The World Health Organization estimates that 4.3 million deaths globally in 2012 were attributable to household air pollution, of which particulate matter (PM) with a diameter of 2.5 µm or less (PM2.5) is a significant contributor. When integrated with a wireless network, low-cost PM measurements potentially provide personalized information on indoor concentrations in real time so that individuals can take action. The objectives of this study were to (1) deploy a network of research-grade instruments and low-cost sensors in a home environment and evaluate the performance, (2) characterize activities and conditions that increase PM concentrations, and (3) identify how these activities affect the PM levels in different rooms of a home. The wireless sensor network included low-cost PM sensors, a gateway, and a database for storing data. Based on the commercially available Dylos DC1100 Pro (Utah Modified Dylos Sensor) and Plantower PMS sensor (AirU), the low-cost sensors were compared to three research-grade instruments—the GRIMM, DustTrak, and MiniVol—in two households in Salt Lake City during summer and winter, with the results suggesting that the low-cost sensors agreed well with the DustTrak. Of the activities, frying food and spraying aerosol products generated the largest increase in PM, both in the room of the activity (the kitchen and bedroom, respectively) and the adjacent rooms. High outdoor PM concentrations during a cold air pool episode also caused indoor levels to rise. In addition, different PM sources triggered different sensor responses. Consequently, obtaining accurate estimates of the mass concentration in an indoor environment, with its wide variety of PM sources, is challenging. However, low-cost PM sensors can be incorporated into an indoor air-quality measurement network to help individuals manage their personal exposure.

The advancement of low-cost sensors provides new opportunities in aerosol research. After calibrating the low-cost sensors in the laboratory and in the fields with research-grade instruments, the accuracy concern of the data quality is resolved. With these research-grade low-cost sensors, PM2.5 and PM1 in a time-resolution of minutes can be obtained. This presentation demonstrates the application of research-grade low-cost sensors in source evaluation for community and indoor PM sources, personal PM exposure assessment, and panel-type epidemiological studies which investigates the associations of peak PM exposure and heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is a marker of cardiac autonomic balance; the reduced HRV indicators were found to be associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction. Cases studies conducted in Asia will be presented. The sensor application on evaluating the contribution of community PM sources was conducted in the Central Taiwan in 2017. The sensor application on assessing indoor PM sources was conducted in the Taipei metropolitan area in the northern Taiwan in 2018. The PM exposure assessment and panel-type of epidemiological studies were conducted in the southern Taiwan and Indonesia in 2018 to 2020. Research-grade low-cost sensors, namely AS-LUNG-O, AS-LUNG-I, and AS-LUNG-P, were used for outdoor, indoor, and personal monitoring in these studies, respectively. The medical-certified RootiRx® sensors were used for HRV monitoring. The results showed that incremental contribution from the stop-and-go traffic, market, temple, and fried chicken vendor to PM2.5 levels at 3–5m away were 4.38, 3.90, 2.72, and 1.80 μg/m3, respectively. Significant PM spatial variations observed further emphasized the importance of conducting community air quality assessment. For indoor sources, cooking occurred most frequently; cooking with and without solid fuel contributed to high PM2.5 increments of 76.5 and 183.8 μg/m3 (1 min), respectively. Incense burning had the highest mean PM2.5 indoor/outdoor (1.44 ± 1.44) ratios at home and on average the highest 5-min PM2.5 increments (15.0 μg/m3) to indoor levels, among all single sources. In exposure assessment and epidemiological studies, it was found that for a 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5, HRV indicators were reduced 1.3-4.0% in Taiwan subjects in summer and 1.8 -5.7% in Indonesia subjects in dry season. The low-cost sensors used and methodology demonstrated in this presentation can be applied in resource-limited countries to conduct PM and health research.

New challenges: residential pesticide exposure assessment in the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, USA

Health risk assessment of personal inhalation exposure to volatile organic compounds in Tianjin, China

Most diseases are thought to arise from the combined effects of genes and the environment. While great strides have been made in our understanding of human genetics, the contribution of environmental exposures to disease remains poorly understood. This lack of understanding impedes real progress in identifying genetically susceptible people whose responses to environmental agents are severe or unique relative to the general population. If identified, targeted prevention and treatment strategies might be applied to these groups, with potentially lifesaving results. Without more personal exposure information, however, scientists have a limited ability to identify pollution-susceptibility genes that elevate disease risk. This mismatch between exposure and genetic research slows the identification of environmental factors that—if altered or removed—could even prevent some diseases from occurring in the first place. “Genes aren’t modifiable,” explains Frederica Perera, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University. “So, these environmental components in diet, food, water, and air are the only ones we can act on for disease prevention.” Exposure is, at a core level, the instance of environmental stimuli such as chemicals, infectious agents, diet, and lifestyle factors interacting with the human body. But studying human exposures poses difficult challenges. Scientists studying the effects of chemical pollutants can’t ethically dose people, so they often base their dose–response estimates on animal models. Further, they base their estimates of human exposure on indirect measures taken from a person’s home or work environment, along with assumptions about individual behaviors that influence the risk of coming into contact with a given pollutant. In a typical study, epidemiologists might use census figures, questionnaires, and general environmental monitoring data (such as samples of water from a household tap or soil in a schoolyard) to estimate how much of a given chemical an individual has come into contact with, and for how long. But while these studies approximate population-level exposures, they provide little information about real exposures to individual people. And because of this, scientists know little about how specific pollutants—particularly in combination with each other, with diet, and with physical activity—affect any individual’s response to the pollutant. With a clear need for progress, exposure assessment has recently come under the spotlight. This year, the NIEHS launched the Exposure Biology Program (EBP), a four-year effort with two overarching goals: to improve exposure assessment technology, and to identify biomarkers for common pathogenic mechanisms that reflect the human response to environmental agents. Such biomarkers could include changes in metabolites, proteins, or DNA that reflect the individual’s genetic susceptibility to environmental harm. “Right now we don’t really understand how exposure levels translate to human health risk, so our goal is to fill that gap,” says EBP coordinator Brenda Weis, a senior scientific advisor at NIEHS. “We need to get a better measure of exposure at the point of human contact, and we need to integrate those measures with biological response measures derived from samples taken directly from exposed people. So, this is a more ‘medical’ approach to exposure assessment—in the sense that measures are taken on a personal level—rather than the broader, ecological approaches we’ve been using so far.”

PP-29-013 Background/Aims: Declining birth and mortality rates bring more aging population in many countries sooner or later. More than 8.3% of the 1.3-billion Chinese are above 65. About two-thirds of the elderly is not in good health condition. Death in the elderly accounted for 86.71% of the total death population. Prevalence of chronic diseases of the elderly is 3.2 times that of all people. According to the research, air pollution is a big issue and a certain contributing factor to the health of the elderly. Methods: Outdoor, indoor, and personal particulate matter (PM10) samples of a panel-study (80 old people aged 65–75) were collected on prebaked Teflon and quartz filters in summer and winter 2009 during the Program of Prestudy of Air Quality Criteria for PM at the Tianjin site in China. The mass concentrations were measured under specific temperature and humidity. Organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC) were analyzed by the thermal optical reflectance method following the IMPROVE protocol. Due to people spending different time in microenvironments, personal exposure was more complicated than expected. So, relationship analysis among outdoor, indoor, and personal PM10 and carbonaceous species were made in order to explain the true level of total exposure. Results: Results come out those concentrations of personal PM10 varied between arrange of 50.30–376.52 μg/m3. A long-term average concentrations of outdoor, indoor, and personal PM10 were 155.27 ± 61.70 μg/m3, 113.11 ± 47.78 μg/m3, and 174.86 ± 83.37 μg/m3 in summer, 178.78 ± 81.60 μg/m3, 173.68 ± 39.96 μg/m3, and 192.37 ± 128.27 μg/m3 in winter, respectively. OC made up the majority of TC and accounted for 12%–30% of mass concentration of PM10. The average OC concentrations of outdoor, indoor, and personal exposure are 18.62 ± 6.46 μg/m3, 24.09 ± 9.03 μg/m3, and 33.83 ± 8.59 μg/m3 in summer, 46.02 ± 25.06 μg/m3, 46.43 ± 17.54 μg/m3, and 64.16 ± 25.06 μg/m3 in winter, respectively. The average OC/EC ratio of outdoor, indoor, and personal exposure are 3.90, 4.65, and 7.03 in summer, 3.25, 4.51 and 5.58 in winter, respectively. Conclusion: Obviously, PM10 pollution in winter was more serious because of heating and insufficient ventilation. It also showed that personal PM10 exposure level was higher than others, suggesting the existence of exposure error in the environmental epidemiological study. Indoor source was the dominant contributor to the OC, and the ratio of OC/EC exceeding 2 also suggested the presence of secondary organic carbon.

A personal inhalation exposure and cancer risk assessment of rural residents in Lampang, Thailand, was conducted for the first time. This highlighted important factors that may be associated with the highest areal incidence of lung cancer. Personal exposure of rural residents to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their nitro-derivatives (NPAHs) through inhalation of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) was investigated in addition to stationary air sampling in an urban area. The personal exposure of the subjects to PM2.5 ranged from 44.4 to 316μg/m3, and the concentrations of PAHs (4.2-224ng/m3) and NPAHs (120-1449pg/m3) were higher than those at the urban site, indicating that personal exposure was affected by microenvironments through individual activities. The smoking behaviors of the rural residents barely affected their exposure to PAHs and NPAHs compared to other sources. The most important factor concerning the exposure of rural populations to PAHs was cooking activity, especially the use of charcoal open fires. The emission sources for rural residents and urban air were evaluated using diagnostic ratios, 1-nitropyrene/pyrene, and benzo[a]pyrene/benzo[ghi]perylene. Their analyses showed a significant contribution to emission from residents' personal activities in addition to the atmospheric environment. Furthermore, the personal inhalation cancer risks for all rural subjects exceeded the USEPA guideline value, suggesting that the residents have a potentially increased cancer risk. The use of open fires showed the highest cancer risk. A reduction in exposure to air pollutants for the residents could potentially be achieved by using clean fuel such as liquid petroleum gas or electricity for daily cooking.

Alternative approaches to lead sampling in drinking water: A comparative study of homes with and without lead service lines in two cities.

Chapter 16 - Residential Exposure Assessment: An Overview

Probabilistic exposure assessment of operator and residential exposure; a Canadian regulatory perspective

Applying indoor and outdoor modeling techniques to estimate individual exposure to PM2.5 from personal GPS profiles and diaries: A pilot study

Assessment of personal exposure from radiofrequency-electromagnetic fields in Australia and Belgium using on-body calibrated exposimeters

Silicone wristbands as personal passive sampling devices: Current knowledge, recommendations for use, and future directions

Low-cost sensors offer the possibility to gain more insight into personal exposure. Compared to traditionalmethods, sensors provide more high resolution data in space and time. However, there is a ...