Children and air pollution monitoring

Abstract

Background: Personal monitoring is now becoming popular both as a research tool and from a health promotion perspective. We have previously reported the exposure profiles of children from the UK using MicroAethalometer (1). These results have formed the basis of intervention studies to reduce the pollution exposure of children (2). We sought to explore the differences in air pollution exposure in two further countries where monitoring has to date been limited.

Methods: As part of the CAPPA pilot study we recruited children aged 8-12 years in two countries (Tanzania and South Africa). The MicroAeth was used to collect 24 black carbon (BC) monitoring results alongside activity diaries. An example of the monitoring period is shown in Figure 1.

Results: A total of 50 children underwent personal BC monitoring over a 24-hour period (25 from each country). There were significantly higher levels of 24 h total BC in South Africa compared to Tanzania 4857578 µg/m3 (SD 3536163) vs 3189485 µg/m3 (SD 1828896.3), P<0.05. Similarly, there were significantly higher number of peaks greater than 50000 µg/m3, 12.8 (SD 22.4) vs 3.2 (SD 4), p<0.05.

Discussion This first look at pollution exposure in these two countries demonstrates further differences of pollution exposure of children across the world. There are clearly differences in sources of pollution in both countries and this could account for the differences. The next step will be to look at microenvironments of the pollution exposure to look for comparisons to the data previously reported in the UK (3).