Abstract
There is concern regarding the heterogeneity of exposure to airborne particulate matter (PM) across urban areas leading to negatively biased health effects models. New, low-cost sensors now permit continuous and simultaneous measurements to be made in multiple locations. Measurements of ambient PM were made from October to April 2015–2016 and 2016–2017 to assess the spatial and temporal variability in PM and the relative importance of traffic and wood smoke to outdoor PM concentrations in Rochester, NY, USA. In general, there was moderate spatial inhomogeneity, as indicated by multiple pairwise measures including coefficient of divergence and signed rank tests of the value distributions. Pearson correlation coefficients were often moderate (~50% of units showed correlations >0.5 during the first season), indicating that there was some coherent variation across the area, likely driven by a combination of meteorological conditions (wind speed, direction, and mixed layer heights) and the concentration of PM2.5 being transported into the region. Although the accuracy of these PM sensors is limited, they are sufficiently precise relative to one another and to research grade instruments that they can be useful is assessing the spatial and temporal variations across an area and provide concentration estimates based on higher-quality central site monitoring data.
Highlights
Ambient particulate matter (PM) has a variety of adverse effects on human health [1]
This study describes the results of two sampling campaigns and discusses the utility of low-cost instruments to determine the spatial variability of hourly PM pollution across a large urban area for consideration of their use in future studies
Low-cost monitors have been designed for indoor purposes, their outdoor use under adverse weather conditions in the housings resulted in good durability of sensing elements, stable sensor sensitivity, limited hardware issues, and consequent data loss
Summary
Ambient particulate matter (PM) has a variety of adverse effects on human health [1]. One more Speck unit was co-located at the DEC site in Rochester (Figure 1), the two seasons. One more Speck unit was co-located at the DEC site in Rochester (Figure 1), where FRM where FRM and FEM instruments were available as well as additional data on air quality (CO, O3, and FEM instruments were available as well as additional data on air quality (CO, O3 , SO2 , and NOy. SO2, and NOy concentrations, downloaded from New York State Air Quality website concentrations, downloaded from New York State Air Quality website http://www.nyaqinow.net/). It was not possible to use a spatially optimal approach, as suggested by Kumar et al [7], since the study depended on volunteers and another part of this study required indoor measurements.
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