You are here:
Air Pollution Exposure Modeling for Epidemiology Studies and Public Health
Citation:
Breen, M. Air Pollution Exposure Modeling for Epidemiology Studies and Public Health. North Carolina State University's School of Engineering Seminar, Raleigh, North Carolina, February 02, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
Dr. Breen's research focuses on development of computational models to improve exposure assessments for air pollution epidemiology studies. Environmental decision-making used to direct EPA programs and policies concerning air pollution (e.g., setting the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, NAAQS) must be based on sound science, which often include air pollution epidemiology studies. Dr. Breen's models can reduce exposure misclassifications that can lead to uncertainty to risk estimates from air pollution health studies.
Description:
Air pollution epidemiology studies of ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) often use outdoor concentrations as exposure surrogates. These surrogates can induce exposure error since they do not account for (1) time spent indoors with ambient PM2.5 levels attenuated from outdoor concentrations, and (2) building-to-building and temporal variability of this attenuation. To help address the potential exposure error, Dr. Breen is leading the development of individual-level air pollution exposure models, integrated with novel personal sensor technologies, to improve exposure assessments for epidemiology studies and for public health. He is co-investigator for multiple epidemiology studies assessing the exposure and health effects for participants with asthma, diabetes, and coronary artery disease. He is also the inventor of a new exposure smart phone App, called TracMyAir. At this seminar, he will present the development and application of these models to predict individual-level exposures for epidemiology studies, in support of improving risk estimation.