Abstract
Analyzing individual exposure in urban areas offers several challenges where both the individual’s activities and air pollution levels demonstrate a large degree of spatial and temporal dynamics. This review article discusses the concepts, key elements, current developments in assessing personal exposure to urban air pollution (seventy-two studies reviewed) and respective advantages and disadvantages. A new conceptual structure to organize personal exposure assessment methods is proposed according to two classification criteria: (i) spatial-temporal variations of individuals’ activities (point-fixed or trajectory based) and (ii) characterization of air quality (variable or uniform). This review suggests that the spatial and temporal variability of urban air pollution levels in combination with indoor exposures and individual’s time-activity patterns are key elements of personal exposure assessment. In the literature review, the majority of revised studies (44 studies) indicate that the trajectory based with variable air quality approach provides a promising framework for tackling the important question of inter- and intra-variability of individual exposure. However, future quantitative comparison between the different approaches should be performed, and the selection of the most appropriate approach for exposure quantification should take into account the purpose of the health study. This review provides a structured basis for the intercomparing of different methodologies and to make their advantages and limitations more transparent in addressing specific research objectives.
Highlights
Air pollution is considered the world’s largest single environmental health risk, contributing to around 7 million premature deaths worldwide, as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), and urban citizens are affected [1,2]
The evidence for the adverse health effects from exposure to air pollution is robust, even though there are still knowledge gaps regarding the exact mechanisms by which air pollutants affect human health, and which pollutants should be tackled with priority [5,6]
It is known that most people temporal and spatial variability of outdoor concentrations, scientific evidence has shown that indoor in European cities spend on average about 80–90% of their time indoors, 1–7% in a vehicle, and only environment plays a significant role in personal exposure to air pollution, where urban populations
Summary
Air pollution is considered the world’s largest single environmental health risk, contributing to around 7 million premature deaths worldwide, as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), and urban citizens are affected [1,2]. The challenge, is that individual exposure to air pollution in urban areas results from a dynamic process and multifaceted iterations between the human being and urban air, depending both on the spatial-temporal dynamics of air pollution concentrations and the individual’s activities Individuals have their very own unique personal exposure to air pollution during their daily life, occurring both in indoor and outdoor environments, and the quantifying process is not straightforward. The review presented in this paper is focused on the concepts, key elements and methods available and required to quantify personal exposure at the spatial and temporal scale, imposed by the behavior of individuals in urban areas Crucial questions such as “How should personal exposure to air pollution be defined?”, “What are the key elements of personal exposure assessment?” and “How can personal exposure to air pollution be quantified?” are addressed in this review. A new conceptualization of personal exposure assessment based on two classification criteria (characterization of air quality and characterization of individual’s activities) is proposed and presented
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