Personal exposures to traffic-related particle pollution among children with asthma in the South Bronx, NY

Abstract

Personal exposures to fine Particulate Matter air pollution (PM2.5), and to its traffic-related fraction, were investigated in a group of urban children with asthma. The relationships of personal and outdoor school-site measurements of PM2.5 and elemental carbon (EC) were characterized for a total of forty fifth-grade children. These students, from four South Bronx, NY schools, each carried air pollution monitoring equipment with them 24 hours per day for approximately one month. Daily EC concentrations were estimated using locally calibrated reflectance of the PM2.5 samples. Personal EC was more closely related to outdoor school-site EC (median subject-specific r = 0.64) than was personal PM with school-site PM2.5 (median subject specific r = 0.33). Regression models also showed a stronger, more robust association of school-site with personal measurements for EC than for PM2.5. High traffic pollution exposure was found to coincide with the weekday early morning rush hour, with higher personal exposures for subjects living closer to a highway (< 500 ft). A significant linear relationship of home distance from a highway with personal EC pollution exposure was also found (up to 1000 ft.). This supports the assumptions by previous epidemiological studies using distance from a highway as an index of traffic PM exposure. These results are also consistent with the assumption that traffic, and especially diesel vehicles, are a significant contributor to personal PM exposure levels of children living in urban areas such as the South Bronx, NY.

Highway proximity and black carbon from cookstoves as a risk factor for higher blood pressure in rural China

“…Our study is also limited by proxy measurements, using distance, of motor vehicle exposure in the full sample. Distance from the highway has nonetheless been used as an indicator of roadway air pollution exposure in developed countries (42,43). Further, women living nearest to the highway had significantly higher exposure to hopanes, direct markers of motor vehicle emissions, than women farthest from the highway in our subsample tracer analysis.…”

Personal particulate matter exposures and locations of students in four neighborhoods in Accra, Ghana

“…Due to the absence of similar data, especially from the developing world, our results could only be broadly compared with other exposure studies. Personal PM 2.5 exposure for school children in Accra neighborhoods were more than double those in USA 17,18,31 and in Europe. 14,32 In USA and the Netherlands, higher personal PM 2.5 exposure was associated with proximity of homes and schools to major roads.…”

“…14,32 In USA and the Netherlands, higher personal PM 2.5 exposure was associated with proximity of homes and schools to major roads. 14,17,32 There are a number of innovations and strengths to our study. We combined geo-referenced data about the neighborhood (from the census and road map), the students' homes and schools, and their movements and exposures to have rich data on exposure to air pollution and its individual, household, and community determinants in a city of a developing country.…”

“…[14][15][16][17][18] Although a few personal PM exposure studies exist in cities of developing countries, 19,20 the great majority of exposure studies are from rural areas, and assessed the role of household cooking and heating as a source of exposure. To the best of our knowledge, only rural exposure studies exist in sub-Saharan Africa 21,22 or studies that have measured school pollution but not personal exposure, 23,24 despite the fact that the urban population in this region is growing faster than any other in the world.…”

Personal exposure to black carbon during commuting in peak and off-peak hours in Shanghai

“…As concentrations of air pollutants from traffic are elevated along roadways, personal exposure in transportation microenvironments may not be adequately characterized by fixed-site monitoring methods (Apte et al, 2011;Moreno et al, 2009). So a large number of exposure studies apply personal monitoring by equipping the study subjects with portable integrated sampling equipment or real-time monitors to study personal exposure (Behrentz et al, 2005;Dons et al, 2012Dons et al, , 2013Kingham et al, 2013;Spira-Cohen et al, 2010). Studies concerning personal pollution exposure on the journey to work had determined that, although temporally and spatially variable, individuals may be exposed to very high ambient pollutant concentrations in the transport microenvironment (e.g.…”