Bio3Air, an integrative system for monitoring individual-level air pollutant exposure with high time and spatial resolution

Abstract Background Air pollution is a leading cause of global disease burden. Lack of suitable methods for long term measuring exposure level at individual level is crippling environmental epidemiology research of air pollution. Methods We report an integrative system, Bio 3 Air, for long term measurement of individual level air pollution exposure, currently focusing on ambient particulate matter (PM). The novel system in real-time quantifies individual's outdoor/indoor status, geological location, lung ventilation rate and PM concentration of individual's surrounding environment, and these metrics are subsequently incorporated in calculating PM exposure. Results The system is fully developed and tested in China, USA and Canada, and has been successfully applied in epidemiology study. Bio 3 Air offers high reliability, sensitivity, reproducibility (>99%) and accuracy. It has high time- and spatial- resolution (≤ 2 min and ≤ 20 m, respectively). Bio 3 Air achieved 91.89% consistency with “gold-standard” method (membrane collection and off-line analysis). Conclusions Bio 3 Air represents a substantial methodological advance in environmental health research of air pollution. It captures information relevant in measuring individual's PM exposure (e.g. real-time outdoor/indoor status, location and lung ventilation rate). Such information is typically missed by conventional approaches. Additional features of Bio 3 Air include easy-to-use, cost-effectiveness and automated data collection, making it a powerful tool facilitating studies of air pollution exposure and health consequences.