Personal exposure to PM2.5 of indoor and outdoor origin in two neighboring Chinese communities with contrasting household fuel use patterns

Xiaoying Li; Sierra Clark; Emily Floess; Jill Baumgartner; Tami Bond; Ellison Carter

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149421

Personal exposure to PM_2.5 of indoor and outdoor origin in two neighboring Chinese communities with contrasting household fuel use patterns

Sci Total Environ. 2021 Dec 15:800:149421. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149421. Epub 2021 Aug 6.

Authors

Xiaoying Li¹, Sierra Clark², Emily Floess³, Jill Baumgartner⁴, Tami Bond⁵, Ellison Carter⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80521, USA; Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics & Occupational Health, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0G4, Canada.
² Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics & Occupational Health, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0G4, Canada; Institute for Health and Social Policy, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0G4, Canada; Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London W2 1NY, UK.
³ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
⁴ Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics & Occupational Health, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0G4, Canada; Institute for Health and Social Policy, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0G4, Canada.
⁵ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA; Department of Mechanical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80521, USA.
⁶ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80521, USA. Electronic address: ellison.carter@colostate.edu.

PMID: 34388646
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149421

Abstract

The Chinese government is replacing high-polluting, household coal heating stoves with electricity- and natural gas-powered heaters to improve ambient air quality. The evaluation of the intervention impact on outdoor PM_2.5 and personal exposure in community level are in their initial stages. We compared outdoor air pollution and personal exposure in two neighboring communities (~2 km) in northern China with contrasting household fuel use patterns: one where residents primarily used coal for cooking and heating ("coal village") and one where natural gas was the dominant fuel ("gas village"). We collected 24-h outdoor gravimetric PM_2.5 samples in each village and concurrently measured 48-h integrated exposures among 71 participants from 41 and 30 households in the coal and gas villages, respectively. PM_2.5 samples were analyzed for mass and chemical composition. Daily outdoor PM_2.5 concentrations in the coal village (mean ± standard deviation: 109 ± 41 μg/m³) were, on average, 1.3 ± 0.2 times higher than in the gas village (88 ± 38 μg/m³). However, personal PM_2.5 exposures were lower in the coal village (116 ± 121 μg/m³ versus 156 ± 106 μg/m³). PM_2.5 species that can serve as tracers for residential coal combustion (e.g., S, Se, Zn, Pb, etc.) and dust (Al, Ca, Mg, Fe, Si and Ti) were higher in the coal village, and the proportion of personal PM_2.5 of outdoor origin in the coal village was nearly 2 times higher than the gas village. Our results suggest that ambient PM_2.5 and its chemical composition can vary at relatively small spatial scales and may reflect community-level differences in the household energy use. However, personal PM_2.5 exposures may not mirror between-village differences in outdoor air pollution if only PM_2.5 mass is evaluated. Individual chemical composition of PM_2.5 exposure can provide important insight in future studies on the effectiveness of source-targeted air quality interventions.

Keywords: Coal combustion; Household energy transition; Natural gas; Outdoor; PM(2.5) personal exposure.

MeSH terms

Air Pollutants* / analysis
Air Pollution* / analysis
Air Pollution, Indoor* / analysis
China
Cooking
Environmental Exposure / analysis
Environmental Monitoring
Humans
Particulate Matter / analysis

Substances

Air Pollutants
Particulate Matter