The intensity, frequency, duration, and contribution of distinct PM2.5 sources in Asian households have seldom been assessed; these are evaluated in this work with concurrent personal, indoor, and outdoor PM2.5 and PM1 monitoring using novel low-cost sensing (LCS) devices, AS-LUNG. GRIMM-comparable observations were acquired by the corrected AS-LUNG readings, with R2 up to 0.998. Twenty-six non-smoking healthy adults were recruited in Taiwan in 2018 for 7-day personal, home indoor, and home outdoor PM monitoring. The results showed 5-min PM2.5 and PM1 exposures of 11.2 ± 10.9 and 10.5 ± 9.8 µg/m3 , respectively. Cooking occurred most frequently; cooking with and without solid fuel contributed to high PM2.5 increments of 76.5 and 183.8 µg/m3 (1 min), respectively. Incense burning had the highest mean PM2.5 indoor/outdoor (1.44 ± 1.44) ratios at home and on average the highest 5-min PM2.5 increments (15.0 µg/m3 ) to indoor levels, among all single sources. Certain events accounted for 14.0%-39.6% of subjects' daily exposures. With the high resolution of AS-LUNG data and detailed time-activity diaries, the impacts of sources and ventilations were assessed in detail.
Keywords: Asian PM exposure sources; I/O ratio; PM sensing device; exposure behavior; indoor particles; low-cost sensors.
© 2020 The Authors. Indoor Air published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.