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© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Low-cost, long-term measures of air pollution concentrations are often needed for epidemiological studies and policy analyses of household air pollution. The Washington passive sampler (WPS), an ultra-low-cost method for measuring the long-term average levels of light-absorbing carbon (LAC) air pollution, uses digital images to measure the changes in the reflectance of a passively exposed paper filter. A prior publication on WPS reported high precision and reproducibility. Here, we deployed three methods to each of 10 households in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: one PurpleAir for PM2.5; two ultrasonic personal aerosol samplers (UPAS) with quartz filters for the thermal-optical analysis of elemental carbon (EC); and two WPS for LAC. We compared multiple rounds of 4-week-average measurements. The analyses calibrating the LAC to the elemental carbon measurement suggest that 1 µg of EC/m3 corresponds to 62 PI/month (R2 = 0.83). The EC-LAC calibration curve indicates an accuracy (root-mean-square error) of 3.1 µg of EC/m3, or ~21% of the average elemental carbon concentration. The RMSE values observed here for the WPS are comparable to the reported accuracy levels for other methods, including reference methods. Based on the precision and accuracy results shown here, as well as the increased simplicity of deployment, the WPS may merit further consideration for studying air quality in homes that use solid fuels.

Details

Title
Application of an Ultra-Low-Cost Passive Sampler for Light-Absorbing Carbon in Mongolia
Author
Bekbulat, Bujin 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Agrawal, Pratyush 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Allen, Ryan W 3 ; Baum, Michael 4 ; Boldbaatar, Buyantushig 5 ; Clark, Lara P 1 ; Galsuren, Jargalsaikhan 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Perry Hystad 6 ; Christian L’Orange 7 ; Vakacherla, Sreekanth 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Volckens, John 7 ; Marshall, Julian D 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; [email protected] (B.B.); [email protected] (L.P.C.) 
 Center for Study of Science, Technology & Policy, Bengaluru 560095, Karnataka, India; [email protected] (P.A.); [email protected] (S.V.) 
 Department of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada; [email protected] 
 Axon Engineering LLC, Bellevue, WA 98006, USA; [email protected] 
 School of Public Health, Mongolian National University of Medical Sciences, Ulaanbaatar 14210, Mongolia; [email protected] (B.B.); [email protected] (J.G.) 
 Department of Public Health and Human Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA; [email protected] 
 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA; [email protected] (C.L.); [email protected] (J.V.) 
First page
8977
Publication year
2023
Publication date
2023
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
14248220
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2888381415
Copyright
© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.