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PERSONAL EXPOSURE AND AMBIENT AIR SAMPLING RELATED TO AN ELDERLY POPULATION LIVING IN A BALTIMORE RETIREMENT CENTER: PRELIMINARY FINDINGS OF THE 1998 BALTIMORE STUDY
Citation:
Williams, R W., J P. Creason, R B. Zweidinger, J C. Suggs, R K. Kwok, AND L S. Sheldon. PERSONAL EXPOSURE AND AMBIENT AIR SAMPLING RELATED TO AN ELDERLY POPULATION LIVING IN A BALTIMORE RETIREMENT CENTER: PRELIMINARY FINDINGS OF THE 1998 BALTIMORE STUDY. Presented at ISEE/ISEA '99 Conference, Athens, Greece, September 5-8, 1999.
Description:
The 1998 Baltimore PM Epidemiology-Exposure Study was conducted during the summer of 1998 with a goal of performing exposure assessment of PM and related copollutants involving a potentially susceptible population living in a retirement facility.
A total of 305 PM2.5, personal exposure samples were obtained over a four week study period using a subject pool of twenty-one elderly residents of an eighteen-story retirement facility near Baltimore, Maryland. Each sample represented a unique twenty-four hour breathing-zone measurement of PM2.5 mass concentration.
Matched micro-environmental PM2.5, and PM10 measures were obtained on at least an every-other-day schedule in the apartments of those participating in personal monitoring. Likewise, residential indoor, residential outdoor, and community platform measures were taken on a daily basis to investigate spatial PM mass concentration variation. Preliminary findings from indoor measurements indicate the presence of an abundance of fine particles with at least a 0.86 PM2.5,/PM10 mass ratio observed daily. PM2.5 personal exposure concentrations ranged from 2.4 to 47.8 ug/m3 daily with an overall individual study mean of 12.9 ug/m3. The mean value for 15 days of apartment monitoring was 10.1 ug/m3 with residential indoor and outdoor concentrations of 9.5 and 22.1 ug/m3, respectively. Mean PM2.5 concentrations inside monitored apartments indicated that the concentration differences were very small (0.1 ug/m3) and not statistically significant. However, statistical differences were observed between the mean personals and the common indoor site (+3.5 ug/rn3 , p=0.0001) as well as between mean personals and subjects apartments (+2.8 ug/m3 , p=0.0001).
This paper has been reviewed in accordance with the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency's peer and administrative review policies and approved for presentation and publication. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.