Abstract View
Children’s PM2.5 Indoor Exposures in Mongolian Kindergartens
ZHIYAO LI, Munkhbayar Buyan, Rufus Edwards, Bat-Amgalan Gantumur, Alex Heikens, Jay R. Turner, Washington University in St. Louis
Abstract Number: 461
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. The poor ambient air quality leads to high indoor PM2.5 exposure because of infiltration, especially for those who live or study in or near the “ger” (yurt) neighborhoods that surround Ulaanbaatar’s urban core. A monitoring study is being conducted to quantitatively evaluate Mongolian indoor air quality with a focus on children’s exposure inside kindergartens and hospitals in the Bayanzurkh District of Ulaanbaatar. The 28-site network, deployed in February 2020 and operating through at least spring 2022, includes 24 kindergartens and 4 healthcare facilities using AirVisual Pro low-cost sensing devices to assess the indoor PM2.5 and CO2 concentrations. A subset of sites has PurpleAir PM devices outdoors. Adjustment factors for several PM low-cost sensing devices, including AirVisual Pro and PurpleAir, were developed from a winter 2019/2020 outdoor pilot study in Bayankhongor, Mongolia, that included collocation with a MetOne Model 2010 Beta Attenuation Monitor (BAM). In Bayanzurkh District, kindergarten indoor concentrations were highest in and near the ger areas. Across the District, large variations of indoor concentrations were sometimes observed over relatively small spatial scales. Indoor air quality and detailed building characteristics data are being used to rank kindergartens for potential interventions. The presentation will summarize results for indoor PM2.5 spatiotemporal variability across the network and both PM2.5 and CO2 variations related to building characteristics and occupancy.