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Training
Sniffing in Apartment Buildings
The approach used in this training involves carrying out "sniffing" experiments inside and outside the apartment building to identify hotspots, which are areas of elevated pollutant concentrations due to specific sources.
"Sniffing" in this case means using an air quality sensor to measure real-time levels of pollution and track down the locations and times with the highest levels.
Learning objectives
In this training, you learn how to perform a personal exposure investigation for airborne pollutants in an apartment building setting.
You will learn how to
Gather air quality data and contextual data on the locations and activities associated with air pollution hotspots.
Visualize the data you collect and how to communicate your results to others.
Illustrate and explain the intensity, frequency, and duration of observed exposure events occuring in your building.
Associate characteristics of exposure events with specific location and activity contexts.
materials
To implement this training, you will need to have access to the elements of the Personal Exposure Toolkit (PET), which consists of the following:
A mobile phone running the iOS or Android operating system
The PET Recorder mobile app installed on your phone
An Atmotube PRO portable air quality monitor
You should also read the Quick Guide to Using the PET Recorder.
characterizing your environment
The PET measures airborne particles and volatile organics chemicals. These pollutants have many possible sources in and around an apartment building. These may include indoor sources (smoking, cooking, cleaning) and outdoor sources (vehicles and wildfires).
Before you embark on personal exposure experiments to characterize air pollution hotspots in your building, do some preliminary investigation of your environment and ask yourself the following questions.
WHAT OUTDOOR SOURCES OF AIR POLLution ARE YOU AWARE OF AT HOME?
Outdoor sources of particles and chemical pollutants may include the following:
Wood smoke
BBQ
Wild fires
Vehicles
Pesticides
Dust
WHAT indoor SOURCES OF AIR POLLUTuion ARE YOU AWARE OF AT HOME?
Indoor sources of particles an chemical pollutants may include the following:
Tobacco smoking
Cannabis smoking
Vaping
Hookah
Cooking
Cleaning supplies
Incense
Candles
Paints and solvents
Nail polish
At what times do you smell odors or are otherwise aware of specific sources?
When you design your personal exposure experiments to characterize air pollution hotspots, it will be important to know the times that you are likely to measure elevated concentrations of air pollution. For example, do you smell odors:
In the early morning
Mid morning
Mid day
In the midafternoon
In the evening
Late at night
In what locations do you smell odors or otherwise detect specific sources?
When you design your personal exposure experiments to characterize air pollution hotspots, it will be important to know the locations in which you are likely to measure elevated concentrations of air pollution. For example, do you smell odors:
In the living room of your unit
In the kitchen of your unit
In the bedroom of your unit
In the hallway
In the lobby
In the garage
In outdoor common areas
In indoor common areas
By the entrance
how often do you you smell odors at specific times and locations?
At what times and in what locations do you smell the strongest odors?
Locations with the strongest odors are likely to be associated with the most serious air pollution hotspots. Identify the locations and times that are associateed with the strongest odors.
Do you have an idea of the locations of the sources of air pollution?
The locations of detected odors can be different from the location of the SOURCES of air pollution. If the active pollution sources are not immediately visible in the locations where you detect odors, think about where the sources may be located. For example:
Do tobacco odors originate in someone elses apartment unit?
Do cooking odors come from common areas?
Do chemcial odors come from storage areas?
How do you think air pollution travels between locations in your building?
Air pollution, consisting of molecules of gas or very tiny particles, can travel through small cracks and crevices in apartment buldings. They can also, of course, travel through open windows, doors, and corridors. Think abour how pollution may be travelling in your building. Here are some examples of how pollution travels:
Cracks around lighting fixtures
Cracks around water pipes
Cracks around power outlets
Cracks along baseboards
Shared ductwork
Cracks under doorways
designing your experiments
Based on your answers to the preliminary assessment questions in the previous section, you should have a pretty good idea of when, where, and how air pollution is present in the air that you breathe in your apartment building. Using this information, you can devise experiments to discover the locations and times with the highest air pollution levels, as well as the exact intensity of the exposure. If you measure repeatedly or continuously, you can study how long the elevated exposure lasts.
A personal exposure experiment consists of a series of measurements at a specific time and location. Each experiment may last anywhere from a minute to an hour or more. The PET Recorder app allows you to initiate measurements and simultaneously record the concurrent location and observed source activity. You can walk around with the monitor and observe when pollution levels get the highest, tagging the peak with a precise location.
Think about where and when you smelled air pollution. Plan specific times to visit those locations with the PET (Atmotube monitor plus PET Recorder app on your phone). It may take several repeated trips to capture events with elevated exposure. To help you plan and schedule your experiments, consider the following questions:
How common do you think elevated air pollution is in your building?
How many captured exposure episodes do you think you may need to be able to communicate clear findings?
Are you able to comfortably move around your building to find hotspots?
How many experiments can you realistically perform in a day or week?
How long will you be able to devote to a given experiment or suite of experiments?
Based on your answers, write out a schedule of when you will conduct experiments in your building, where you will go, and approximately how long you will measure. Try to plan for at least 2 weeks of experiments to see if you can capture multiple episodes on different days and times.
Gathering your Data
TBD
managing your Data
TBD
visualizing your data
TBD
communicating your results
TBD