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Personal exposure to ultrafine particles in multiple microenvironments among adolescents

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology (2024)Cite this article

Abstract

Background

Experimental studies suggest ultrafine particles (UFPs), the smallest size fraction of particulate matter, may be more toxic than larger particles, however personal sampling studies in children are lacking.

Objective

The objective of this analysis was to examine individual, housing, and neighborhood characteristics associated with personal UFP concentrations as well as the differences in exposures that occur within varying microenvironments.

Methods

We measured weekly personal UFP concentrations and GPS coordinates in 117 adolescents ages 13–17 to describe exposures across multiple microenvironments. Individual, home, and neighborhood characteristics were collected by caregiver completed questionnaires.

Results

Participants regularly exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke had significantly higher indoor concentrations of UFPs compared to participants who were not. We observed that the ‘home’ microenvironment dominated the relative contribution of overall UFP concentrations and sampling time, however, relative proportion of integrated UFP exposure were higher in ‘other’ environments.

Impact Statement

In this study, we employed a novel panel study design, involving real-time measurement of UFP exposure within the multiple microenvironments of adolescents. We found a combination of personal sampling and detailed activity patterns should be used in future studies to accurately describe exposure-behavior relationships.

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Fig. 1: Average contribution of each microenvironment (%) to participants’ total weekly UFP exposure.

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Data availability

Requests for deidentified data may be made to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participants of this study for their time and dedication to complete personal air monitoring.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Grant R33ES024713.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Ashley Turner, Chris Wolfe & Patrick H. Ryan

  2. Technology Advancement Commercialization Division, RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

    Chris Wolfe

  3. Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Patrick H. Ryan

Authors
  1. Ashley Turner
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  2. Chris Wolfe
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Contributions

AT: Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. CW: Methodology, Resources, Software, Data curation, Writing—review & editing, Investigation, Project administration. PR: Methodology, Writing—review & editing, Conceptualization, Supervision, Funding acquisition.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ashley Turner.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval

Study protocols were approved by Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Institutional Review Board (2017-1068).

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Turner, A., Wolfe, C. & Ryan, P.H. Personal exposure to ultrafine particles in multiple microenvironments among adolescents. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-023-00638-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-023-00638-7

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