Measurement of personal and integrated exposure to particulate matter and co-pollutant gases: a panel study

Personal exposure measurement can serve as an effective tool to understand the effect of exposure to air pollutants. Alternatively, exposure assessment using pollutant concentrations in different microenvironments and accurate time-activity information for the subjects can provide good information regarding human integrated exposure. A panel of 18 healthy students of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur in the age group of 18 to 30 years participated in the personal exposure measurements for particulate matter, CO, NO(2) and VOC during post-monsoon and pre-monsoon seasons. Overall, 432 h person exposure data was collected in this study. The major sources of particulate and gaseous co-pollutants were identified. These directly obtained personal exposure values were then compared to the indirectly estimated integrated exposure values. Personal and integrated exposures gave statistically similar results. Through this study, we have shown that integrated exposure values could closely estimate the personal exposure values for particulate matter that can significantly reduce time and cost involved in personal exposure studies. The lung parameters for all the subjects measured during the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon seasons showed statistically significant reduction during pre-monsoon. This was attributed to the high levels of coarse particles during pre-monsoon.