Bio3Air, an integrative system for monitoring individual-level air pollutant exposure with high time and spatial resolution.

Abstract Background Air pollution is a leading cause of global disease burden. Lack of suitable methods for long term measuring exposure level at individual level is crippling environmental epidemiology research of air pollution. Methods We report an integrative system, Bio³Air, for long term measurement of individual level air pollution exposure, currently focusing on ambient particulate matter (PM). The novel system in real-time quantifies individual's outdoor/indoor status, geological location, lung ventilation rate and PM concentration of individual's surrounding environment, and these metrics are subsequently incorporated in calculating PM exposure. Results The system is fully developed and tested in China, USA and Canada, and has been successfully applied in epidemiology study. Bio³Air offers high reliability, sensitivity, reproducibility (>99%) and accuracy. It has high time- and spatial- resolution (≤ 2 min and ≤ 20 m, respectively). Bio³Air achieved 91.89% consistency with "gold-standard" method (membrane collection and off-line analysis). Conclusions Bio³Air represents a substantial methodological advance in environmental health research of air pollution. It captures information relevant in measuring individual's PM exposure (e.g. real-time outdoor/indoor status, location and lung ventilation rate). Such information is typically missed by conventional approaches. Additional features of Bio³Air include easy-to-use, cost-effectiveness and automated data collection, making it a powerful tool facilitating studies of air pollution exposure and health consequences. Highlights • We developed a novel system, Bio³Air, for long-term measure of particulate matter (PM) exposure at individual level. • The system demonstrated high time- and spatial-resolution, data reproducibility and accuracy in quantifying PM exposure. • Bio³Air is potentially useful tool facilitating studies on air pollutant exposure and health consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]