Implementation and validation of a modeling framework to assess personal exposure to black carbon

Because people tend to move from one place to another during the day, their exposure to air pollution will be determined by the concentration at each location combined with the exposure encountered in transport. In order to estimate the exposure of individuals in a population more accurately, the activity-based modeling framework for Black Carbon exposure assessment, AB(2)C, was developed. An activity-based traffic model was applied to model the whereabouts of individual agents. Exposure to black carbon (BC) in different microenvironments is assessed with a land use regression model, combined with a fixed indoor/outdoor factor for exposure in indoor environments. To estimate exposure in transport, a separate model was used taking into account transport mode, timing of the trip and degree of urbanization. The modeling framework is validated using weeklong time-activity diaries and BC exposure as revealed from a personal monitoring campaign with 62 participants. For each participant in the monitoring campaign, a synthetic population of 100 model-agents per day was made up with all agents meeting similar preconditions as each real-life agent. When these model-agents pass through every stage of the modeling framework, it results in a distribution of potential exposures for each individual. The AB(2)C model estimates average personal exposure slightly more accurately compared to ambient concentrations as predicted for the home subzone; however the added value of a dynamic model lies in the potential for detecting short term peak exposures rather than modeling average exposures. The latter may bring new opportunities to epidemiologists: studying the effect of frequently repeated but short exposure peaks on long term exposure and health.