Short-Term Exposure to Ultrafine Particles, Black Carbon, and Noise: Comparison Between Panel Data and Mobility-Based Exposures Derived from Land Use Regression Models

High exposures to Ultrafine Particles (UFP), Black Carbon (BC), and noise can lead to health impacts, and it is therefore crucial to accurately determine population exposures. Directly monitoring personal exposure remains the gold standard, but this is often unfeasible as sample sizes increase. As an alternative, collecting a person’s activity patterns and daily mobility using GPS only, coupled with exposure surfaces derived from land-use regression (LUR) models could be used to predict daily exposure. In this study, the authors compared personal exposures against exposures derived from LUR-based surfaces to estimate the bias induced by the use of exposure surfaces. Five surfaces were tested (two for UFP, two for BC and one for noise), all developed based on data collected through either stationary (i.e. fixed points) or mobile (i.e. cycling) measurements in Toronto, Canada. During the same period where data collection for the development of exposure surfaces took place, a panel study involving 46 participants was also implemented, thus providing personal exposures linked with GPS data. Relative errors for each surface were calculated against personal exposure. None of the surfaces were highly correlated with the personal exposure data. However, all surfaces provided reasonably similar estimations of daily average exposures. The surface based on stationary measurements for noise did not exceed a relative error beyond 2.2%. The UFP and BC surfaces developed based on mobile measurements predicted exposures closer to personal exposures compared with surfaces based on stationary measurements.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADC20 Standing Committee on Transportation and Air Quality.
• Authors:
  • Liu, Rick
  • Minet, Laura
  • Shekarrizfard, Maryam
  • Fallah-Shorshani, Masoud
  • Weichenthal, Scott
  • Hatzopoulou, Marianne
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 9p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Land use; Mobility; Pollutants; Public health; Traffic noise
• Geographic Terms: Toronto (Canada)
• Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01656957
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-01502
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 22 2018 10:54AM