Environmental Particulate Matter (PM) Exposure Assessment of Construction Activities Using Low-Cost PM Sensor and Latin Hypercubic Technique

Abstract

Dust generation is generally considered a natural process in construction sites; ergo, workers are exposed to health issues due to fine dust exposure during construction work. The primary activities in the execution of construction work, such as indoor concrete and mortar mixing, are investigated to interrogate and understand the critical high particulate matter concentrations and thus health threats. Two low-cost dust sensors (Sharp GP2Y1014AU0F and Alphasense OPC N2) without implementing control measures to explicitly evaluate, compare and gauge them for these construction activities were utilized. The mean exposures to PM10, PM2.5 and PM1 during both activities were 3522.62, 236.46 and 47.62 µg/m3 and 6762.72, 471.30 and 59.09 µg/m3, respectively. The results show that PM10 and PM2.5 caused during the concrete mixing activity was approximately double compared to the mortar. The Latin Hypercube Sampling method is used to analyze the measurement results and to predict the exposure concentrations. The high dust emission and exposure from mixing activities fail to meet the World Health Organization and Health and Safety Commission standards for environmental exposure. These findings will leverage the integration of low-cost dust sensors with Building Information Modelling (BIM) to formulate a digital twin for automated dust control techniques in the construction site.

Blockchain-Based Network Concept Model for Reliable and Accessible Fine Dust Management System at Construction Sites

“…In this scenario, the static measurement using a light scattering digital dust sensor was considered for real-time measurement of the fine dust concentration in a construction site. It was assumed that the sensor performed the measurement in intervals of 10 min, and the GP2Y1010AU0F module was used to acquire the sensor data [21]. 3.…”

“…Khan et al employed two low-cost dust sensors (Sharp GP2Y1014AU0F and Alpha sense OPC-N2) without implementing control measures to explicitly evaluate, compare, and gauge them for construction activities. Latin hypercube sampling was used to analyze the measurement results and predict the exposure concentrations [21].…”

Measurement and sonification of construction site noise and particle pollution data

“…Though, presently, the cost of gathering this type of data is high due to expensive sensors (Mydlarz et al. , 2017; Khan et al. , 2021).…”

“…IoT technology can collect data from several units and store them in a central unit, which is cost, compared to a person visiting each device to collect data manually (Louis and Dunston, 2018). Though, presently, Sonification of construction data the cost of gathering this type of data is high due to expensive sensors (Mydlarz et al, 2017;Khan et al, 2021). Therefore, the possibilities of low-price IoT devices to collect and transmit data remotely is of interest to the construction industry (Ghosh et al, 2020;Kang et al, 2021).…”

“…discussions in Lima and Oliveira, 2016;Kivel€ a and Hakala, 2015;Vidanã-Vila et al, 2020;Hallett et al, 2018). This reasoning can also be transferred to measuring particle concentration (Wang et al, 2015), and there are several studies that explore the use of low-cost particle sensors (Kelly et al, 2017;Bulot et al, 2020;Khan et al, 2021). Consequently, low-cost sensors can supplement the use of expensive and often rare regulatory-grade measurement devices (Malings et al, 2020) to capture an outdoor disturbing phenomenon in a rough environment, such as construction transport.…”