Performance evaluation of ozone and particulate matter sensors.

As public awareness and concern about air quality grows, companies and researchers have begun to develop small, low-cost sensors to measure local air quality. These sensors have been used in citizen science projects, in distributed networks within cities, and in combination with public health studies on asthma and other air-quality-associated diseases. However, sensor long-term performance under different environmental conditions and pollutant levels is not fully understood.

Long-term trends in ambient air 1,3-butadiene levels in Houston, Texas.

1,3-Butadiene is one of the top air pollution risk drivers in the United States. The ambient air concentrations in Houston, TX are of particular interest because of the relatively large number of stationary industrial sources that report 1,3-butadiene emissions and the relatively large number of vehicle miles traveled every day on Houston roadways. Several Federal and State regulatory programs initiated over the last two decades regulate the amount of 1,3-butadiene emitted to the air from industrial, mobile, and area sources.