{"doi":"10.1101/2025.06.09.25329147","title":"Using low-cost sensors and GPS to assess spatiotemporal variations in personal exposure to PM <sub>2.5</sub> in the Washington State Twin Registry","abstract":"Epidemiological studies typically rely on exposure assessments based on ambient PM 2.5 concentrations at participants' home addresses. However, these approaches neglect personal exposures indoors and across different non-residential microenvironments. To address this problem, our study combined low-cost sensors and GPS to conduct two-week personal PM 2.5 monitoring in 168 adults recruited from the Washington State Twin Registry between 2018 and 2021. PM 2.5 mass concentration, size-resolved particle number concentration, temperature, humidity, and GPS coordinates were recorded at 1-minute intervals, providing 5,161,737 datapoints. We used GPS coordinates and a processing algorithm for automatic classification of microenvironments, including seven land use types and vehicles, and time spent indoors/outdoors. The low-cost sensors were calibrated in-situ, using regulatory monitoring data within 600 m of participants' outdoor measurements (R 2 = 0.93). A linear mixed model was used to estimate the associations of multiple spatiotemporal factors with personal exposure concentrations. The average PM 2.5 exposure concentration was 8.1 ± 15.8 μg/m3 for all participants. Indoor exposure concentration was higher than outdoor exposure level, and indoor exposure dose contributed 77% to the total exposure. Exposures in residential and industrial land use had a higher concentration than in other areas, and accounted for 69% of the total exposure dose. Furthermore, personal exposure concentration was the highest during winter and evening hours, possibly due to cooking and heating-related behaviors. This study demonstrates that personal monitoring can capture spatiotemporal variations in PM 2.5 exposure more accurately than home-based approaches based on ambient air quality, and suggests opportunities for controlling exposures in certain microenvironments.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2025,"id":567845,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9589,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":267873,"name":"Ally R. Avery","orcid":"0000-0002-1294-6480","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":490445,"name":"Elena Austin","orcid":"0000-0002-4724-1042","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":545919,"name":"John Scott Meschke","orcid":"0000-0002-8983-9042","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1344139,"name":"Nicola K. Beck","orcid":"0000-0002-5868-2206","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1417931,"name":"Graeme Carvlin","orcid":"0000-0001-5671-9944","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":555362,"name":"Yisi Liu","orcid":"0000-0001-6974-1462","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":695155,"name":"Anne Vernez Moudon","orcid":"0000-0001-8485-4799","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":409409,"name":"Igor Novosselov","orcid":"0000-0002-6347-7450","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":636950,"name":"Jeffry H. Shirai","orcid":"0000-0002-9864-532X","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":264613,"name":"Glen E. Duncan","orcid":"0000-0001-6909-1869","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":267874,"name":"Edmund Seto","orcid":"0000-0003-4058-0313","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1417930,"name":"Ningrui Liu","orcid":"0009-0003-1963-5452","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:56:48.183032Z","pmid":"40585067","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}