Attributing air pollutant exposure to emission sources with proximity sensing

Biomass burning for home energy use contributes to negative health outcomes and environmental degradation. As part of the REACCTING study (Research on Emissions, Air quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana), personal exposure to carbon monoxide (CO) was measured to gauge the effects of introducing two different cookstove types over four intervention groups. A novel Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) Beacon system was deployed on a subset of those CO measurement periods to estimate participants’ distances to their most-used cooking areas during the sampling periods. In addition to presenting methods and validation for the BLE Beacon system, here we present pollution exposure assessment modeling results using two different approaches, in which time-activity (proximity) data is used to: (1) better understand exposure and behaviors within and away from homes; and (2) predict personal exposure via microenvironment air quality measurements. Model fits were improved in both cases, demonstrating the benefits of the proximity measurements.