Understanding Spatiotemporal Variability and Local Sources of Indoor and Outdoor PM2.5 across Urban and Rural Neighborhoods in New York State

Marco Eugene, SANCHITA PAUL, Farid Barak, Md. Aynul Bari, University at Albany, SUNY

     Abstract Number: 576
     Working Group: Identifying and Addressing Disparate Health and Social Impacts of Exposure to Aerosols and Other Contaminants across Continents, Communities, and Microenvironments

Abstract
While urban ambient air quality is routinely monitored in major U.S. cities, little attention has been paid to assess the quality of air in residential neighborhoods. In general, American adults typically spend two-third of their time indoors in residential environments. Different daily activities and sources within homes may contribute considerably to exposure to particles. The COVID-19 pandemic with home isolation and tendency to working from home drastically increased the daily indoor activities in recent years, leading to increased indoor air pollutants and associated risk to vulnerable population. This highlights the importance of monitoring indoor and near-field outdoor air quality across neighborhoods in New York State (NYS).

Due to cost and logistics required for reference-grade PM2.5 monitors and limitations for wide-spread deployment, the use of low-cost sensors have shown a great promise. We measured PM2.5 both indoors (living room) and outdoors (backyards) using low-cost PurpleAir sensors in selected neighborhoods in the NYS Capital Region and Hudson Valley communities. We deployed sensors in 4-5 homes/apartments of each neighborhood during winter and spring of the study period November 2021-May 2023 to collect data from at least 60 homes. We performed local calibration of outdoor PurpleAir sensor data by co-locating with a reference monitor at NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) site in Albany. Our preliminary data suggests that outdoor concentrations were significantly higher than indoors, indicating an influence of potential local sources (e.g., landfills, port emissions) at some communities. Indoor concentrations were also varied significantly across neighborhoods. Source directional analysis further confirmed the influence of known local sources on neighborhood air quality. Our findings will provide an improved understanding of community-specific particulate air pollution problems, can benefit the general people to improve their knowledge, increase awareness, and inform policy makers the need to reduce indoor and near-field outdoor air pollution.