Information on time spent in microenvironments has a critical role for personal exposure to environmental pollutants. Unlike several large-scale studies in Western countries, no comprehensive research on time-activity patterns for exposure assessment has been conducted in Korea. We investigated determinants of residential indoor and transportation times of individuals over 10-years old in the Korean population. The population-based study collected time-activity patterns of 31,634 Koreans for two consecutive days. The residential indoor and transportation times were collected for a weekday and a weekend day. The impact of sociodemographic factors on time-activity was assessed using multiple linear regression models. The residential indoor times were 14.23 h for the weekday and 16.13 h for the weekend and shorter than those in Western countries. The transportation times were 1.75 h for the weekday and 1.68 h for the weekend day. The most significant factors in residential indoor time were employment status, age, monthly income, and gender for the weekday and employment status and gender for the weekend day. The factors in transportation were gender, employment status, and monthly income for the weekday and gender, employment status, age, and marriage status for the weekend day. Determinants of the time-activity pattern need to be taken into account in exposure assessment, epidemiological analyses, and exposure simulations, as well as in the development of preventive strategies. As Korean population activity patterns are substantially different from those in Western countries such as USA, Germany, and UK, this information could be critical for exposure assessment in Korea and other Asian countries.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/jes.2010.23 | DOI Listing |
Sci Total Environ
January 2025
Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA. Electronic address:
J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol
January 2025
Environmental Research Group, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK.
Background: Accurate estimates of personal exposure to ambient air pollution are difficult to obtain and epidemiological studies generally rely on residence-based estimates, averaged spatially and temporally, derived from monitoring networks or models. Few epidemiological studies have compared the associated health effects of personal exposure and residence-based estimates.
Objective: To evaluate the association between exposure to air pollution and cognitive function using exposure estimates taking mobility and location into account.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2025
Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02114.
Radon, a common radioactive indoor air pollutant, is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States. Knowledge about its distribution is essential for risk assessment and designing efficient protective regulations. However, the three current radon maps for the United States are unable to provide the up-to-date, high-resolution, and time-varying radon concentrations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK.
The rapid development of low-cost sensors provides the opportunity to greatly advance the scope and extent of monitoring of indoor air pollution. In this study, calibrated particle matter (PM) sensors and a non-negative matrix factorisation (NMF) source apportionment technique are used to investigate PM concentrations and source contributions across three households in an urban residential area. The NMF is applied to combined data from all houses to generate source profiles that can be used to understand how PM source characteristics are similar or differ between different households in the same urban area.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Environ Health Rep
January 2025
Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA.
Purpose Of Review: Indoor air pollution is likely to be elevated in multi-family housing and to contribute to health disparities, but limited studies to date have systematically considered the empirical evidence for exposure differentials between multi-family and single-family housing. Our goal is to separately examine the drivers of residential indoor air pollution, including outdoor air pollution, ventilation and filtration, indoor sources, and occupant activity patterns, using secondhand smoke as a case study to examine the behavioral dimensions of indoor environmental interventions.
Recent Findings: Within studies published from 2018 to 2023, multi-family homes have higher average outdoor air pollution than single-family homes given their more frequent presence in urban and near-roadway settings.
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