Abstract View
Mongolia PM2.5 Ambient Air Quality and Children's Indoor Exposures at School
ZHIYAO LI, Munkhbayar Buyan, Rufus Edwards, Alex Heikens, Jay R. Turner, Washington University in St. Louis
Abstract Number: 563
Working Group: Aerosol Exposure
Abstract
Mongolia’s population centers experience poor wintertime air quality because the cold climate drives strong ground-level inversions and pervasive solid fuels use for distributed residential space heating. Ulaanbaatar (UB, pop. ~1.5MM) has robust air monitoring but measurements outside of UB are sparse. Project objectives include using low-cost sensors (LCS) to quantify PM2.5 spatiotemporal variability outdoors in Bayankhongor (BKH, pop.~30K) and assess children’s PM2.5 exposures in kindergartens in both UB and BKH.
Pilot studies commenced in Nov. 2019 to inform the Feb. 2020 deployment of larger-scale indoor and outdoor LCS networks. One site in BKH consists of three units each of five LCS types collocated with a US EPA Federal Equivalent Method beta attenuation monitor (BAM) to evaluate LCS accuracy, precision, and ruggedness. For the period Nov. through Feb. 2020, three of the five LCS types exhibited high data capture and high correlation with the BAM for temperatures as low as -30°C and hourly PM2.5 ranging ~10-300 µg/m3 (5th-95th percentiles). These device types were biased high by 25-40% with a discernible temperature-dependent bias. The pilot study continues through 2020 to evaluate seasonal patterns in the LCS-to-BAM relationships.
Children’s exposures at school are estimated through kindergarten measurements which also assess, to the extent practicable, the efficacy of interventions such as air purifiers and mechanical ventilation. This indoor pilot study includes two BKH and four UB locations. Each site has one device each of five LCS types (with three of each device at one of two locations), and one device outdoors. Indoor PM2.5 and indoor/outdoor PM2.5 temporal profiles are observed to vary by kindergarten location and type of intervention.
The presentation will summarize results from the pilot studies and the first half-year of full network operation.