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Leveraging Citizen Science and Low-Cost Sensors to Characterize Air Pollution Exposure of Disadvantaged Communities in Southern California
| Content Provider | MDPI |
|---|---|
| Author | Lu, Tianjun Liu, Yisi Garcia, Armando Wang, Meng Li, Yang Bravo-Villasenor, German Campos, Kimberly Xu, Jia Han, Bin |
| Copyright Year | 2022 |
| Description | Assessing exposure to fine particulate matter $(PM_{2.5}$) across disadvantaged communities is understudied, and the air monitoring network is inadequate. We leveraged emerging low-cost sensors (PurpleAir) and engaged community residents to develop a community-based monitoring program across disadvantaged communities (high proportions of low-income and minority populations) in Southern California. We recruited 22 households from 8 communities to measure residential outdoor $PM_{2.5}$ concentrations from June 2021 to December 2021. We identified the spatial and temporal patterns of $PM_{2.5}$ measurements as well as the relationship between the total $PM_{2.5}$ measurements and diesel PM emissions. We found that communities with a higher percentage of Hispanic and African American population and higher rates of unemployment, poverty, and housing burden were exposed to higher $PM_{2.5}$ concentrations. The average $PM_{2.5}$ concentrations in winter (25.8 $µg/m^{3}$) were much higher compared with the summer concentrations (12.4 $µg/m^{3}$). We also identified valuable hour-of-day and day-of-week patterns among disadvantaged communities. Our results suggest that the built environment can be targeted to reduce the exposure disparity. Integrating low-cost sensors into a citizen-science-based air monitoring program has promising applications to resolve monitoring disparity and capture “hotspots” to inform emission control and urban planning policies, thus improving exposure assessment and promoting environmental justice. |
| Starting Page | 8777 |
| e-ISSN | 16604601 |
| DOI | 10.3390/ijerph19148777 |
| Journal | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health |
| Issue Number | 14 |
| Volume Number | 19 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | MDPI |
| Publisher Date | 2022-07-19 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Environmental Engineering Exposure Assessment Low-cost Sensing Public Engagement Traffic-related Air Pollution Environmental Inequality |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
