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A PARTICIPANT-BASED APPROACH TO INDOOR/OUTDOOR AIR MONITORING IN COMMUNITY HEALTH STUDIES
Citation:
JOHNSON, M. M., E. E. HUDGENS, R. W. WILLIAMS, G. ANDREWS, L. M. NEAS, J. E. GALLAGHER, AND H. A. OZKAYNAK. A PARTICIPANT-BASED APPROACH TO INDOOR/OUTDOOR AIR MONITORING IN COMMUNITY HEALTH STUDIES. Presented at International Society of Exposure Assessment, Durham, NC, October 14 - 18, 2007.
Impact/Purpose:
The current study utilized a novel participant-based approach to collect indoor and outdoor air monitoring data for 92 asthmatic and non-asthmatic children.
Description:
Community health studies of traffic-related air pollution have been hampered by the cost and participant burden associated with collecting household-level exposure data. The current study utilized a novel participant-based approach to collect indoor and outdoor air monitoring data for 92 asthmatic and non-asthmatic children (9-12 years old) enrolled in EPA health studies in Detroit, Michigan (Mechanistic Indicators of Childhood Asthma and Detroit Children’s Health Study). Passive samplers were shipped to participating households and deployed by parents of study participants to collect indoor and outdoor measurements of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), volatile organic compounds (VOC), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), and naphthalene (NAP). Half of the households deployed VOC and NO2 samplers for 7 days; the other half deployed PAH and NO2 samplers for 2 days and NAP samplers for 1 day. Participants also provided questionnaire data (respiratory health, household characteristics, food intake, and time-activity), exhaled nitric oxide and lung function measurements, vacuum dust samples, and biological specimens (blood, urine, and nail samples). Approximately 90% of the households that received air sampling kits completed the air monitoring. Over 90% of these participants provided usable data. Compliance was significantly higher among participants asked to deploy all samplers for 7 days compared with participants asked to deploy some samplers for 2 days and others for 1 day. Compliance did not vary between parents of asthmatic versus non-asthmatic study participants or among households deploying duplicate samplers. Air monitoring data from this study will be presented and compared with EPA data collected under Detroit Exposure Aerosol Research Study and Detroit Air Quality System. These results suggest that participant-driven sampling may be a feasible and cost-effective alternative to traditional exposure assessment approaches that can be applied in future epidemiologic and community-based health studies. This is an abstract of a proposed presentation and does not necessarily reflect EPA policy.