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. 2020 Nov;30(6):990-1000.
doi: 10.1038/s41370-019-0172-z. Epub 2019 Sep 26.

The use of bluetooth low energy Beacon systems to estimate indirect personal exposure to household air pollution

Jiawen Liao  1 , John P McCracken  2 , Ricardo Piedrahita  3 , Lisa Thompson  4   5 , Erick Mollinedo  2 , Eduardo Canuz  2 , Oscar De Léon  2 , Anaité Díaz-Artiga  2 , Michael Johnson  3 , Maggie Clark  6 , Ajay Pillarisetti  7 , Katherine Kearns  8 , Luke Naeher  8 , Kyle Steenland  4 , William Checkley  9   10 , Jennifer Peel  6 , Thomas F Clasen  4 ; HAPIN investigators
Collaborators, Affiliations

The use of bluetooth low energy Beacon systems to estimate indirect personal exposure to household air pollution

Jiawen Liao et al. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol. 2020 Nov.

Erratum in

Abstract

Household air pollution (HAP) generated from solid fuel combustion is a major health risk. Direct measurement of exposure to HAP is burdensome and challenging, particularly for children. In a pilot study of the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial in rural Guatemala, we evaluated an indirect exposure assessment method that employs fixed continuous PM2.5 monitors, Bluetooth signal receivers in multiple microenvironments (kitchen, sleeping area and outdoor patio), and a wearable signal emitter to track an individual's time within those microenvironments. Over a four-month period, we measured microenvironmental locations and reconstructed indirect PM2.5 exposures for women and children during two 24-h periods before and two periods after a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stove and fuel intervention delivered to 20 households cooking with woodstoves. Women wore personal PM2.5 monitors to compare direct with indirect exposure measurements. Indirect exposure measurements had high correlation with direct measurements (n = 62, Spearman ρ = 0.83, PM2.5 concentration range: 5-528 µg/m3). Indirect exposure had better agreement with direct exposure measurements (bias: -17 µg/m3) than did kitchen area measurements (bias: -89 µg/m3). Our findings demonstrate that indirect exposure reconstruction is a feasible approach to estimate personal exposure when direct assessment is not possible.

Keywords: Fine particulate matters (PM2.5); Household air pollution; Indirect exposure; LPG Intervention; Microenvironment.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(a-d): setup of Beacon systems in the sleeping area (a), the kitchen (b), on the patio (d) and on a female participant (c). The dotted red circle in each panel highlights the sampling equipment and Beacon loggers. Panel (e) is a schematic sketch of the Beacon system and ECM setup
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Daily average time (hour) spent in each microenvironment for women (a) and children (b).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Direct and indirect PM2.5 exposures for women and the contribution of indirect exposure from each microenvironment (kitchen, sleeping area and outdoor patio)
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Bland-Altman Plot of Women’s 24-hour Direct and Indirect (a) and Women’s Direct and Kitchen Area PM2.5 Measure (b)
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Indirect PM2.5 exposure for children and contribution of indirect exposure from microenvironment locations (kitchen, sleeping area, outdoor patio and women/mothers’ personal direct microenvironment)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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