TY - JOUR
T1 - Study of the Suitability of a Personal Exposure Monitor to Assess Air Quality
AU - Aljofi, Halah E.
AU - Bannan, Thomas J.
AU - Flynn, Michael
AU - Evans, James
AU - Topping, David
AU - Matthews, Emily
AU - Diez, Sebastian
AU - Edwards, Pete
AU - Coe, Hugh
AU - Brison, Daniel R.
AU - van Tongeren, Martie
AU - Johnstone, Edward D.
AU - Povey, Andrew
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 by the authors.
PY - 2024/3
Y1 - 2024/3
N2 - Low-cost personal exposure monitors (PEMs) to measure personal exposure to air pollution are potentially promising tools for health research. However, their adoption requires robust validation. This study evaluated the performance of twenty-one Plume Lab Flow2s (PLFs) by comparing its air pollutant measurements, particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 μm or less (PM2.5), 10 μm or less (PM10), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), against several high-quality air pollution monitors under field conditions (at indoor, outdoor, and roadside locations). Correlation and regression analysis were used to evaluate measurements obtained by different PLFs against reference instrumentation. For all measured pollutants, the overall correlation coefficient between the PLFs and the reference instruments was often weak (r < 0.4). Moderate correlation was observed for one PLF unit at the indoor location and two units at the roadside location when measuring PM2.5, but not for PM10 and NO2 concentration. During periods of particularly higher pollution, 11 PLF tools showed stronger regression results (R2 values > 0.5) with one-hour and 9 PLF units with one-minute time interval. Results show that the PLF cannot be used robustly to determine high and low exposure to poor air. Therefore, the use of PLFs in research studies should be approached with caution if data quality is important to the research outputs.
AB - Low-cost personal exposure monitors (PEMs) to measure personal exposure to air pollution are potentially promising tools for health research. However, their adoption requires robust validation. This study evaluated the performance of twenty-one Plume Lab Flow2s (PLFs) by comparing its air pollutant measurements, particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 μm or less (PM2.5), 10 μm or less (PM10), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), against several high-quality air pollution monitors under field conditions (at indoor, outdoor, and roadside locations). Correlation and regression analysis were used to evaluate measurements obtained by different PLFs against reference instrumentation. For all measured pollutants, the overall correlation coefficient between the PLFs and the reference instruments was often weak (r < 0.4). Moderate correlation was observed for one PLF unit at the indoor location and two units at the roadside location when measuring PM2.5, but not for PM10 and NO2 concentration. During periods of particularly higher pollution, 11 PLF tools showed stronger regression results (R2 values > 0.5) with one-hour and 9 PLF units with one-minute time interval. Results show that the PLF cannot be used robustly to determine high and low exposure to poor air. Therefore, the use of PLFs in research studies should be approached with caution if data quality is important to the research outputs.
KW - air pollution monitoring
KW - air quality monitoring
KW - commercial portable low-cost wearable sensor
KW - field evaluation
KW - performance evaluation
KW - personal monitoring tools
KW - portable air quality
KW - public health
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85188823646
U2 - 10.3390/atmos15030315
DO - 10.3390/atmos15030315
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85188823646
SN - 2073-4433
VL - 15
JO - Atmosphere
JF - Atmosphere
IS - 3
M1 - 315
ER -
