New Wristbands could Help Detect Air Quality

Air pollution accounts for an estimated 4.2 million deaths per year due to stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, acute and chronic respiratory diseases, says the World Health Organization. Experts from Texas A&M University have designed an inexpensive and convenient method of using silicone wristbands that helps detect air quality.

Wristbands have been used to detect a number of pollutants, but a qualification of those pollutants remains a challenge. Our goal was to evaluate to what extent we can use wristbands as passive samplers to quantify PAHs in air.

Air Pollution - Pollutants - Health Effect - Efforts to Reduce
Nearly 2.4 million deaths every year are attributable to air pollution. Air pollutants may be solid particles, liquid droplets or gases. Proper planning methods should be adopted to reduce air pollution.

‘Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) cause many adverse birth outcomes, including low birth weight and preterm birth. Wristbands could serve as good sampling devices for quantifying PAHs in the air.’

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Texas showed a heightened prevalence of childhood asthma and a higher prematurity rate (14.8%) than the rest of the state (12.9%). Thus, the team sought to investigate the intensity of exposure to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) among pregnant women using silicone wristbands.

According to the CDC, Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are a class of chemicals that occur naturally in coal, crude oil, and gasoline. They are also produced when coal, oil, gas, wood, garbage, and tobacco are burned. These chemicals are capable of forming small particles in the air.

In the current study, the team sought to quantify maternal PAH exposure in pregnant women residing in McAllen, Texas. For this, they used a new approach based on which participants carried backpacks containing air-sampling equipment and silicone wristbands for a day during their outdoor activities.

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Both the air-sampling equipment and the silicone wristbands were tested for the PAHs on the next day. "We found that patterns of detection are similar for low molecular-weight compounds and that attaching the wristbands to the backpack’s strap is a good sampling design for evaluating conditions under which wristbands could be used for quantifying PAHs in air," said co-author Itza Mendoza-Sanchez, highlighting the potential use of wrist bands as passive air samplers.

As the wristbands are easy to wear and inexpensive, the authors opine that the demonstration they have provided in the study could be helpful in future studies that evaluate adverse health outcomes from prenatal PAH exposure.

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The results of the complete study were published in Nature’s Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology .

Source-Medindia

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