Behavioral and environmental determinants of personal exposures to PM sub(2) sub(.) sub(5) in EXPOLISAHelsinki, Finland

• Published in: Atmospheric environment (1994) 2001-01, Vol.35 (14), p.2473-2481
• Main Authors: Koistinen, Kimmo J, Haenninen, Otto, Rotko, Tuulia, Edwards, Rufus D, Moschandreas, Demetrios, Jantunen, Matti J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1352-2310

Behavioral and environmental determinants of PM sub(2) sub(.) sub(5) personal exposures were analyzed for 201 randomly selected adult participants (25-55 years old) of the EXPOLIS study in Helsinki, Finland. Personal exposure concentrations were higher than respective residential outdoor, residential indoor and workplace indoor concentrations for both smokers and non-smokers. Mean personal exposure concentrations of active smokers (31.0 plus or minus 31.4 mu g m super(-) super(3) ) were almost double those of participants exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) (16.6 plus or minus 11.8 mu g m super(-) super(3) ) and three times those of participants not exposed to tobacco smoke (9.9 plus or minus 6.2 mu g m super(-) super(3) ). Mean indoor concentrations of PM sub(2) sub(.) sub(5) when a member of the household smoked indoors (20.8 plus or minus 23.9 mu g m super(-) super(3) ) were approximately 2.5 times the concentrations of PM sub(2) sub(.) sub(5) when no smoking was reported (8.2 plus or minus 5.2 mu g m super(-) super(3) ). Interestingly, however, both mean (8.2 mu g m super(-) super(3) ) and median (6.9 mu g m super(-) super(3) ) residential indoor concentrations for non-ETS exposed participants were lower than residential outdoor concentrations (9.5 and 7.3 mu g m super(-) super(3) , respectively). In simple linear regression models residential indoor concentrations were the best predictors of personal exposure concentrations. Correlations (r super(2) ) between PM sub(2) sub(.) sub(5) personal exposure concentrations of all participants, both smoking and non-smoking, and residential indoor, workplace indoor, residential outdoor and ambient fixed site concentrations were 0.53, 0.38, 0.17 and 0.16, respectively. Predictors for personal exposure concentrations of non-ETS exposed participants identified in multiple regression were residential indoor concentrations, workplace concentrations and traffic density in the nearest street from home, which accounted for 77% of the variance. Subsequently, step-wise regression not including residential and workplace indoor concentrations as input (as these are frequently not available), identified ambient PM sub(2) sub(.) sub(5) concentration and home location, as predictors of personal exposure, accounting for 47% of the variance. Ambient fixed site PM sub(2) sub(.) sub(5) concentrations were closely related to residential outdoor concentrations (r super(2) = 0.9, p = 0.000) and PM sub(2) sub(.) sub(5) perso