Abstract
This study is part of the “Air Polluion Impacts on Cardiopulmonary disease in Beijing: an integrated study of Exposure Science, Toxicologenomics & Environmental Epidemiology (APIC-ESTEE)” project under the UK-China joint research programme “Atmospheric Pollution and Human Health in a Chinese Megacity (APHH-China)”. The aim is to capture the spatio-temporal variability in people's exposure to fine particles (PM2.5) and black carbon (BC) air pollution in Beijing, China. A total of 120 students were recruited for a panel study from ten universities in Haidian District in northwestern Beijing from December 2017 to June 2018. Real-time personal concentrations of PM2.5 and BC were measured over a 24-h period with two research-grade portable personal exposure monitors. Personal microenvironments (MEs) were determined by applying an algorithm to the handheld GPS unit data. On average, the participants spent the most time indoors (79% in Residence and 16% in Workplace), and much less time travelling by Walking, Cycling, Bus and Metro. Similar patterns were observed across participant gender and body-mass index classifications. The participants were exposed to 33.8 ± 27.8 μg m−3 PM2.5 and to 1.9 ± 1.2 μg m−3 BC over the 24-h monitoring period, on average 24.3 μg m−3 (42%) and 0.8 μg m−3 (28%) lower, respectively, than the concurrent fixed-site ambient measurements. Relative differences between personal and ambient BC concentrations showed greater variability across the MEs, highlighting significant contributions from Dining and travelling by Bus, which involve potential combustion of fuels. This study demonstrates the potential value of personal exposure monitoring in investigating air pollution related health effects, and in evaluating the effectiveness of pollution control and intervention measures.
Highlights
Outdoor and indoor air pollution have been identified as the most important environmental risk factors for adverse human health outcomes across the world (Loomis et al, 2013; World Health Organization, 2006; World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, 2013)
What is the relationship between “true” personal exposure with the average ambient concentration measured at the nearest fixed-site statutory monitoring station, which is conventionally used to represent community exposure in epidemiological studies?. This study investigates these questions by capturing the spatio-temporal variability in individual exposure to PM2.5 and black carbon (BC) pollution in Beijing in higher-education students carry two research-grade low-intrusive real-time personal monitors and GPS trackers
The WHO has not set a guideline concentration for BC at present, but the personal concentration measured in this study (1.9 ± 1.2 μg m-3) was comparable with the exposure levels observed in vehicles in another Chinese megacity, Shanghai (Lei et al, 2016), and on jogging trails in Macau (3.5 ± 2.3 μg m-3) (Liu et al, 2019). Both of these published studies reported a large spatial variability in BC in relation to distance to major roads. This current study found substantial variability in personal BC concentration between participants monitored on the same day and within some individual participants, whereas such variability was less dramatic for personal PM2.5 concentrations, between simultaneously monitored participants
Summary
Outdoor and indoor air pollution have been identified as the most important environmental risk factors for adverse human health outcomes across the world (Loomis et al, 2013; World Health Organization, 2006; World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, 2013). The issue of air pollution is especially of concern in developing countries due to their rapid and large-scale urbanisation, leading to extreme levels of pollution impacting large populations. The fast growth in pollutant emission sources, together with adverse dispersion conditions, in winter, has led to a dramatic deterioration in air quality, often resulting in severe haze episodes that have attracted worldwide attention (An et al, 2019). It is estimated that 1.15 million people die prematurely each year in China because of ambient air pollution (World Health Organization, 2018). Ischemic heart disease, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are the top causes of the premature deaths (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), 2018), and have all been associated with long-term exposure to airborne particulate matter (PM), especially fine PM with an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5)
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