AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Personal, Indoor, and Outdoor Exposure Assessment of Particulate Matter and Their Associations with Respiratory Symptoms in Children
SEUNG-HYUN CHO, Jonathan Thornburg, Charles Rodes, Diane Wagener, RTI International
Abstract Number: 483 Working Group: Aerosol Exposure
Abstract Exposure to particulate matter (PM) has been linked to various adverse health effects. However, assessing the level of exposure is a challenging task due to high cost and varying wearing compliance for personal monitors, and exposure misclassification from stationary monitoring. A comparative PM measurement study has been planned to investigate the difference between personal and stationary air monitoring, and the impact of measures implemented to minimize exposure misclassification. Five to nine days of integrated PM samples of 10 micrometer or smaller will be collected using personal, indoor, and outdoor monitors for 100 children live in Louisiana and Mississippi who are a subset of Children's Health after the Storm (CHATS) cohort. Daily sample will be also collected from a central-site monitor in Louisiana. RTI's MicroPEM equipped with a nephelometer and an accelerometer in addition to particle filter will be used to collect real-time PM concentration and activity level data for personal monitoring. Monitor wearing compliance and an estimated inhalation dose will be calculated from those data. Children will be asked to complete a time-location diary that identifies children's location between indoor/outdoor home, indoors/outdoors other than home, and transportation for four 6-hour integrated time periods. Exhaled nitric oxide, a marker of airway inflammation, will be measured at the end of the air sampling, and respiratory symptoms experienced during the sampling period will be asked. The PM concentrations measured by various monitors will be compared. The difference in associations between health measurements and each type of PM measurement with and without information on monitor wearing compliance and time-location diary will give insight on the best approach and limitations in PM exposure assessment at various monitoring settings. The inhalation dose will provide valuable information that external exposure measurement cannot address on health effects.