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Smoking increases air pollution levels in city streets: observational and fine particulate data
Vimal Patel1, George Thomson, Nick Wilson
1Department of Public Health, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Te Tari Hauora Tumatanui, University of Otago Wellington, PO Box 7343, Wellington South, New Zealand. vimal.patel@otago.ac.nz
Introduction:
To address the paucity of research around smokefree streets, we: (i) refined existing data collection methods; (ii) expanded on the meagre previous research in this area; and (iii) compared results by differing size of urban centre.
Methods:
We refined established methods; a solo observer simultaneously observed smoking and measured fine particulate levels (PM(2.5)) on a route of shopping streets in central Lower Hutt City, New Zealand.
Results:
Over 33.6 h of measurement, mean fine particulate levels were 1.7 times higher when smoking was observed than when it was not (7.9 vs 4.8 μg/m(3); p=0.0001).
Conclusions:
Smoking appeared to be a substantive contributor to fine particulate air pollution in city streets, when compared to levels adjacent to road traffic.
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