Wearable Sensors for Personal Monitoring and Estimation of Inhaled Traffic-Related Air Pollution: Evaluation of Methods

Abstract

Physical activity and ventilation rates have an effect on an individual's dose and may be important to consider in exposure-response relationships; however, these factors are often ignored in environmental epidemiology studies. The aim of this study was to evaluate methods to estimate the inhaled dose of air pollution and understand variability, in the absence of a true gold standard metric. Five types of methods were identified: (1) methods using (physical) activity types; (2) methods based on energy expenditure, METs (metabolic equivalents of task) and oxygen consumption; (3) methods based on heart rate or (4) breathing rate; and (5) methods that combine heart and breathing rate. Methods were compared using a real-life dataset of 122 adults who wore devices to track movement, black carbon air pollution and physiological health markers for three weeks in three European cities. Different methods to estimate minute ventilation performed well in relative terms with high correlations among different methods. But in absolute terms, ignoring increased ventilation during day to day activities could lead to an underestimation of daily dose by a factor 0.08 to 1.78. There is no single best method and a multitude of methods are currently being used to approximate dose.The choice of a suitable method to determine dose in future studies will depend both on the size and the objectives of the study.

Concern over health effects of air pollution is associated to NO2 in seven European cities

“…We included these variables as we believe that parents could be more concerned over the health of their children than over their own health; moreover children are more susceptible to air pollution. Participants who were physically active may be inhaling more pollution because of their increased breathing, thus may be more worried about the health effects of air pollution (Dons et al 2017). They may also be more health-conscious in general, hence more worried about air pollution (Tormo et al 2003).…”

Black Carbon Reduces the Beneficial Effect of Physical Activity on Lung Function

“…Higher ventilation rates during physical activity result in an increased pollutant dose and deeper penetration of particles into the lungs (4,5). Nevertheless, various health impact assessments have been carried out and reported that the overall benefits of physical activity outweigh the risks of air pollution (6)(7)(8).…”

Exercising in Air Pollution: The Cleanest versus Dirtiest Cities Challenge

“…Previous findings have suggested that short-term exposure to air pollution might cause cardiovascular failures, increase respiratory hospitalization and oxidative stress damage, while long-term air pollution exposure might cause cardiovascular mortality, cancer, premature death [ 8 ], and asthma [ 9 ]. It is particularly relevant because during aerobic exercise the higher minute ventilation (VE) could lead to a higher inhalation of pollutants [ 5 ], what has been already discussed in previous studies and analyzed with different methods by Dons et al [ 10 ]. One of the first studies directly investigating the association between the increased VE during exercise and air pollutants inhalation was conducted by Panis et al [ 11 ].…”