Environmental Particulate Matter (PM) Exposure Assessment of Construction Activities Using Low-Cost PM Sensor and Latin Hypercubic Technique

Muhammad Khan,Numan Khan,Miroslaw J Skibniewski,Chansik Park

doi:10.3390/su13147797

Muhammad Khan, Numan Khan + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147797

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Abstract

Dust generation is generally considered a natural process in construction sites; ergo, workers are exposed to health issues due to fine dust exposure during construction work. The primary activities in the execution of construction work, such as indoor concrete and mortar mixing, are investigated to interrogate and understand the critical high particulate matter concentrations and thus health threats. Two low-cost dust sensors (Sharp GP2Y1014AU0F and Alphasense OPC N2) without implementing control measures to explicitly evaluate, compare and gauge them for these construction activities were utilized. The mean exposures to PM10, PM2.5 and PM1 during both activities were 3522.62, 236.46 and 47.62 µg/m3 and 6762.72, 471.30 and 59.09 µg/m3, respectively. The results show that PM10 and PM2.5 caused during the concrete mixing activity was approximately double compared to the mortar. The Latin Hypercube Sampling method is used to analyze the measurement results and to predict the exposure concentrations. The high dust emission and exposure from mixing activities fail to meet the World Health Organization and Health and Safety Commission standards for environmental exposure. These findings will leverage the integration of low-cost dust sensors with Building Information Modelling (BIM) to formulate a digital twin for automated dust control techniques in the construction site.

Highlights

The construction industry contributes a large amount of particulate matter to the environment, putting public health at risk [1,2,3]
This study helps to broaden the scope of environmental monitoring of Particulate Matters (PM) exposure from primary construction activity to put some effort into it
This research presented a categoric comparison of the pivotal activities such as concrete mixing and mortar mixing during physical construction to identify the critical activity that contributes to environmental pollution

Summary

Introduction

The construction industry contributes a large amount of particulate matter to the environment, putting public health at risk [1,2,3]. Particulate Matters (PM) is produced during the construction phase, from the early stages of material transport to the dismantling phase, and the regular construction operations involving the soil and materials are the primary sources of dust. Regular operations such as cement mixing, demolition and grinding of concrete are the main activities involved in the formation of fine (particles smaller than 2.5 μm) and ultrafine PM particles (particles smaller than 1 μm) in the soil, according to the results of a study conducted in Hong Kong by Li et al [1].

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