Using novel portable air quality monitors to improve personal exposure and dose estimations for health studies
type: CreativeWork
description: Poor air quality is a severe issue for society, affecting the health and well-being of huge parts of the population worldwide. To efficiently reduce the risk of premature death associated with air pollution, a deeper understanding of the causal links between air pollution exposure and human health is needed. However, conventional health studies are restricted by methodological limitations such as miss-estimations of personal exposure and the interdependence between different pollutant species when using traditional outdoor exposure metrics. Taking advantage of recent advancements in sensor technologies and computational techniques, this dissertation presents a novel methodological approach to improve air pollution exposure and dose estimates for epidemiological research. The novel methodology combines personal air quality monitors (PAMs) measuring nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O₃) and particulate matter (PM), with a time-location-activity model to generate accurate personal air pollution exposure estimations under field conditions. The monitors were comprehensively characterised and deployed in different exposure studies in the UK, China, Germany, and Kenya, supporting wider studies of air pollution and human health. The PAM measurements showed excellent agreement with standard instrumentation in indoor, outdoor, and commuting environments. Field deployments involving hundreds of participants revealed the substantial exposure misclassification introduced when using ambient measurements as metrics of exposure. The correlation between individual pollutants usually observed at air quality monitoring stations was found to substantially decrease using the high spatial resolution of the portable sensors, allowing more refined estimates of the health effects of different pollutants. The deployments showed that local emission sources had often a far more important impact on personal exposure than regional sources, and the air pollution composition chan…
abstract: Poor air quality is a severe issue for society, affecting the health and well-being of huge parts of the population worldwide. To efficiently reduce the risk of premature death associated with air pollution, a deeper understanding of the causal links between air pollution exposure and human health is needed. However, conventional health studies are restricted by methodological limitations such as miss-estimations of personal exposure and the interdependence between different pollutant species when using traditional outdoor exposure metrics. Taking advantage of recent advancements in sensor technologies and computational techniques, this dissertation presents a novel methodological approach to improve air pollution exposure and dose estimates for epidemiological research. The novel methodology combines personal air quality monitors (PAMs) measuring nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O₃) and particulate matter (PM), with a time-location-activity model to generate accurate personal air pollution exposure estimations under field conditions. The monitors were comprehensively characterised and deployed in different exposure studies in the UK, China, Germany, and Kenya, supporting wider studies of air pollution and human health. The PAM measurements showed excellent agreement with standard instrumentation in indoor, outdoor, and commuting environments. Field deployments involving hundreds of participants revealed the substantial exposure misclassification introduced when using ambient measurements as metrics of exposure. The correlation between individual pollutants usually observed at air quality monitoring stations was found to substantially decrease using the high spatial resolution of the portable sensors, allowing more refined estimates of the health effects of different pollutants. The deployments showed that local emission sources had often a far more important impact on personal exposure than regional sources, and the air pollution composition chan…
author: Krause, Anika
language: eng
keywords: air pollution, environmental monitoring, personal exposure, epidemiology, sensors, portable air quality monitor, miniatured sensor technologies, nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM)
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/05c8c580-2d61-40c4-acf8-9eab9b7cb414/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2020-09-01
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:18Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.64122