The researchers at the University at Buffalo have just received a two-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to work on a smart phone application that can track air pollution.
Carole Rudra, PhD, UB assistant professor of social and preventive medicine, will assess a person’s exposure to pollutants in certain areas of the City of Buffalo.
A city’s air pollution can vary from place to place, so in order to track the amount you need to know the subject’s location throughout the day. A smart phone that has a built in GPS can be very helpful in determining the amount of pollution.
“There are many ways to estimate air pollution exposures among humans,” Rudra said. “Many current methods are based on participants’ home addresses. These methods don’t take into account the fact that people don’t spend all day inside their homes. In an urban area, exposure changes significantly as people go about their daily activities.”
This problem can be overcome by using the smart phone’s GPS to track the location of the participant. Since the location will register on its own, there is no need for the participant to call every time they change location.
Any smart phone can be used and all 40 participants will record their location several times a day during a three-month period. The location is then defined by geographical coordinates which are a set of numbers designated to every location on earth. The researchers then check the air pollution monitoring sites in those various locations to determine the participants’ exposure to air pollutants.
The study is important because air pollution can cause many health problems including asthma, heart disease, lung cancer, COPD, and others.
“This project will develop a method that will improve our ability to estimate human exposures to air pollutants, and will improve public health by allowing researchers to more accurately measure human exposures and relate these exposures to health outcomes,” says Rudra.