Personal Exposure Using Low Cost PM Sensors in Disproportionately Impacted Denver Communities
MARYAM ANIYA KHALILI, Sumit Sankhyan, Nicholas Clements, Sophie Dolores Castillo, Allison Heckman, Dulce Gonzalezbeltran, Valentina Serrano-salomon, Omar Hammad, Esther Sullivan, Shivakant Mishra, Shelly L. Miller,
University of Colorado Boulder Abstract Number: 471
Working Group: Meet the Job Seekers
AbstractThe Social Justice and Environmental Quality (SJEQ) – Denver project funded by National Science Foundation (SJEQDenver.com) is working in the communities of Globeville, Elyria-Swansea, Cole, and Clayton to understand and improve the disruption from the major construction going on in the area. Community members used personal low-PM sensors (Atmotubes) to monitor their exposure to air pollution as they went about their day. In total, we engaged with four cohorts of community scientists over the course of two years. We also conducted four colocations with EPA federal reference monitors to develop correction algorithms for the sensors. In each cohort, 50 participants from the communities joined our project and used the Atmotube sensors for an entire month. In the last two cohorts, we provided participants with Do-It-Yourself air cleaners to use during those cohorts.
In this presentation, we will describe our final analysis of these exposure concentration data. Many community scientists had elevated PM2.5 exposure concentrations. Colocation results showed good intra-unit consistency (spearman correlation coefficient rs>0.8), but less agreement with the EPA monitor (spearman correlation coefficient rs>0.5), resulting in a need to correct the final data sets. Trends in exposure concentrations will be explored including distance from major construction, seasonal differences, and weekend/weekday differences. Finally, we will present the results from comparing the cohorts pre and post-intervention looking for trends and information about PM2.5 exposure concentrations within the community.