A participant-based approach to indoor/outdoor air monitoring in community health studies

Community health studies of traffic-related air pollution have been hampered by the cost and participant burden associated with collecting household-level exposure data. The current study utilized a participant-based approach to collect indoor and outdoor air monitoring data from 92 asthmatic and nonasthmatic children (9-13 years old) enrolled in two concurrent health studies in Detroit, Michigan (Mechanistic Indicators of Childhood Asthma and Detroit Children's Health Study) conducted by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Passive samplers were shipped to participating households and deployed by parents of study participants to collect indoor and outdoor measurements of nitrogen dioxide (NO(2)), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) including naphthalene. Half of the households deployed VOC and NO(2) samplers for 7 days; the other half deployed PAH and NO(2) samplers for 2 days and additional PAH samplers for 1 day. Approximately 88% of the households that received air sampling kits completed the air monitoring. Compliance was significantly higher among participants asked to deploy all samplers for 7 days (85%) compared with participants asked to deploy some samplers for 2 days and others for 1 day (56%). The 7-day homes were also more likely to provide usable data (96%) compared with the 1- and 2-day homes (73%). Compliance and providing usable data did not vary between parents of asthmatic versus nonasthmatic study participants and were not reduced among households deploying duplicate samplers. These results suggest that participant-based sampling may be a feasible and cost-effective alternative to traditional exposure assessment approaches that can be applied in future epidemiological and community-based health studies.