Our Project
The 2021 World Health Organization (WHO) Air Quality Guidelines included four good practice statements to help guide actions to decrease concentrations of ultrafine particles (UFP) and ultimately reduce population exposure to UFP. The good practice statements included recommendations to expand common air quality monitoring to include size-segregated and real-time measurements of UFP along with particulate matter (PM) mass measurements and to advance UFP monitoring technologies and approaches. Although instrumentation to monitor UFP has been developed and such instruments are active worldwide, their extensive space, controlled operating environments, and expertise requirements make them unsuitable for large-scale deployment into established air quality monitoring networks. A small, handheld UFP device called the Naneos Partector 2 Pro2 (hereafter referred to as the P2 pro) based on a measurement technique involving unipolar diffusion chargers has shown promise as an alternative candidate monitor to be deployed at scale.
Aims and Objectives
This study’s primary objectives are:
- To test and evaluate the P2 pro’s ability to monitor continuously in ambient conditions for 12 months.
- To evaluate the P2 pro’s measurement performance with a focus on total particle number concentration (PNC) and particle size distributions. The UFP size range and size bins that will be evaluated correspond to the eight size bins the P2 pro reports, specifically, bins with 10, 16.3, 26.4, 43, 69.8, 113.5, 184.6, and 300 nm midpoints.
Methods
Twelve research groups based in Australasia, Asia, North America, and Europe have deployed P2 pro devices and will monitor UFP for at least 12 months. The P2 pro is being tested in 12 locations across the world and the evaluation period will run from January 2025 to December 2025. The devices are installed in established air quality monitoring sites that generally include PM mass measurements. The devices will also (at least periodically) be collocated with mobility particle size spectrometers (MPSS) and/or condensation particle counters (CPC) which will be used as reference instrumentation for the evaluation of measurement performance of the UFP metrics. The monitoring sites cover a range of environments ensuring a diverse range of UFP characteristics and climatic zones. Monitoring is occurring within and outside urban areas with variable proximity to primary UFP emission sources. The 12 monitoring teams will monitor the P2 pro to identify potential malfunctions or failures quickly and intervene when necessary to maximize data capture rates. Observations will be uploaded monthly to allow for central storage and management to ensure consistent data analysis approaches. Furthermore, the Partector will be evaluated with the performance and uncertainty metrics contained within the CEN/TS 17434:20203 technical specification to allow for comparison among other UFP monitors and offer insight on what monitoring applications the P2 pro is most suited to.
The evaluation of the device and the study’s outlined objectives are the first steps towards generating the required datasets to robustly calculate UFP’s exposure-response functions in the future.
Project Leader
- Lidia Morawska, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
Investigators
- Alicia Josa-Cullere, Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), Barcelona, Spain
- Andrew Brown, Air Quality and Aerosol Metrology Group, Middlesex, United Kingdom
- Andrés Alastuey, CSIC, IDAEA, Spanish Research Council, Barcelona, Spain
- Christof Asbach, Filtration & Aerosol Research Department, Institut für Umwelt & Energie, Technik & Analytik e.V. (IUTA), Duisburg, Germany
- Christoph Hüglin, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland
- Claudia Mohr, Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, Villigen, Switzerland
- David Green, Environmental Research Group, Imperial College London, United Kingdom
- Giorgio Buonanno, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Casino, Italy
- Hamesh Patel, Mote Ltd., Auckland, New Zealand
- Hao Wang, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China
- Haoxuan Chen, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
- Hilkka Timonen, Atmospheric Composition Research, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland
- Jarkko Niemi, Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority HSY, Helsinki, Finland
- Kimmo Teinilä, Atmospheric Composition Research, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland
- Luca Stabile, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Casino Italy
- Lucy Green, Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom
- Lukas Baron, LUBW Landesanstalt für Umwelt Baden-Württemberg, Karlsruhe, Germany
- Mar Viana, CSIC, IDAEA, Spanish Research Council, Barcelona, Spain
- Martin Fierz, Naneos Particle Solutions GmbH, Windisch, Switzerland
- Michail Lazaridis, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece
- Noel Aquilina, Faculty of Science, University of Malta
- Prashant Kumar, Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom
- Roy Harrison, School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
- Sofia Eirini Chatoutsidou, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece
- Topi Rönkkö, Aerosol Physics Laboratory, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
- Tuukka T Petäjä, Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research, Faculty of Science, University of Helsinki, Finland
- Ville Silvonen, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Tampere University, Finland
- Xavier Querol, CSIC, IDAEA, Spanish Research Council, Barcelona, Spain
- Yifang Zhu, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
