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Evaluating Students’ Dose of Ambient PM2.5 While Active Home-School Commuting with Spatiotemporally Dense Observations from Mobile Monitoring Fleets

Xuying Ma,Xinyu Zhao,Zelei Tan,Xiaoqi Wang,Yuyang Tian,Siyuan Nie,Anya Wu,Yanhao Guan

Published 2025 in Environments

ABSTRACT

Understanding the dose of ambient PM2.5 inhaled by middle school students during active commuting between home and school is essential for optimizing their travel routes and reducing associated health risks. However, accurately modeling this remains challenging due to the difficulty of measuring ambient PM2.5 concentrations along commuting routes at a population scale. In this study, we overcome this limitation by employing spatiotemporally dense observations of on-road ambient PM2.5 concentrations collected through a massive mobile monitoring fleet consisting of around 200 continuously operating taxis installed with air quality monitoring instruments. Leveraging these rich on-road PM2.5 observations combined with a GIS-terrain-based PM2.5 dosage modeling approach, we (1) assess middle school students’ PM2.5 dosages during morning (7:00 am–8:00 am) home–school walking commuting along the shortest-distance route; (2) examine the feasibility of identifying an alternative route for each student that minimizes PM2.5 dosages during commuting; (3) investigate the trade-off between the relative reduction in PM2.5 dosage and the relative increase in route length when opting for the alternative lowest-dosage route; and (4) examine whether exposure inequalities exist among students of different family socioeconomic statuses (SES) during their home–school commutes. The results show that (1) 18.8–57.6% of the students can reduce the dose of PM2.5 by walking along an alternative lowest-dose route; (2) an alternative lowest-dose route could be found by walking along a parallel, less-polluted local road or walking on the less-trafficked side of the street; (3) seeking an alternative lowest-dose route offers a favorable trade-off between effectiveness and cost; and (4) exposure inequities do exist in a portion of students’ walking commutes and those students from higher-SES are more likely to experience higher exposure risks. The findings in our study could offer valuable insights into commuter exposure and inspire future research.

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