Monitoring Air Pollution Variability during Disasters

• Main Author: Earthea Nance
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
• Series: Atmosphere
• Subjects: air pollution; particulate matter; mobile monitoring; short-term exposure; mortality; Gulf oil spill
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/4/420

National environmental regulations lack short-term standards for variability in fine particulate matter (PM_2.5); they depend solely on concentration-based standards. Twenty-five years of research has linked short-term PM_2.5, that is, increases of at least 10 μg/m³ that can occur in-between regulatory readings, to increased mortality. Even as new technologies have emerged that could readily monitor short-term PM_2.5, such as real-time monitoring and mobile monitoring, their primary application has been for research, not for air quality management. The Gulf oil spill offers a strategic setting in which regulatory monitoring, computer modeling, and stationary monitoring could be directly compared to mobile monitoring. Mobile monitoring was found to best capture the variability of PM_2.5 during the disaster. The research also found that each short-term increase (≥10 μg/m³) in fine particulate matter was associated with a statistically significant increase of 0.105 deaths (<i>p</i> < 0.001) in people aged 65 and over, which represents a 0.32% increase. This research contributes to understanding the effects of PM_2.5 on mortality during a disaster and provides justification for environmental managers to monitor PM_2.5 variability, not only hourly averages of PM_2.5 concentration.