Study On Environmental Health Effects Of COPD For COPD Patients: An Exploratory Preliminary Study

Part One:The detection and calibration of a newly portable air quality monitor.Objective:Portable air quality monitor can quantify personal exposure of air pollution more precisely. We aim at a newly developed portable air quality monitor which is based on light scattering principle, investigating its correlation between the monitor and the standard device and the intragroup consistence in PM2.5 and PM10 measurements in order to improve its function.Methods:Several new air quality monitors and standard TSI8532 were tested in the same environment for a period of time. The particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10) were constantly tested in the air simultaneously. The linear regression model and nonparametric tests were used to determine the correlation strength between these two kinds of instruments and the intragroup consistence.Results:The new air quality monitor and standard TSI8532 had a good agreement, with the R2 of PM2.5 being 0.9737 and that of PM10 being 0.9744. However, the intragroup measurements indicated significant difference, especially the PM10 measurements.Conclusions:The new air quality monitor has a good agreement with TSI, but an unsatisfying consistence within the groups.Part Two:Pariculate matter exposure and cardiopulmonary functions monitored with mobile devices:a pilot studyObjective:Evaluate the feasibility of applying mobile devices to monitor the cardiopulmonary signs of participants and their personal exposure of particulate matter, and explore possible difficulties and problems that may occur in this monitoring process. Lay a solid foundation for the future experiments through which we will use mobile devices to study the environment-health effect and guide the patients to self-manage their diseases distantly. Meanwhile, the short-term effect of air particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10) exposure on the pulmonary function, heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation of the COPD patients were studied.Methods:We built a complete set of mobile monitoring devices by assembling the instruments for vital signs measurements and designing a network data platform.9 qualified COPD patients were recruited and demonstrated how to manipulate the instruments and how to upload the data. A 11-day short term study was conducted via these mobile devices, and the air pollution data from the common fixed monitoring stations nearest the participants’residences was obtained within the same period. Finally the relationship between the cardiopulmonary signs and particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10) exposure was analyzed.Results:Except two cases without wireless network at home, seven participants could install the mobile devices set correctly. We obtained manually recorded data of those two cases and both the manually recorded data and uploaded data via network from the other seven cases at the end of the experiment. We found that distant manipulation could well control the data quality and give instructions to the participants timely in the meanwhile. We discovered that most of the cardiopulmonary signs had no significant association with the self-measurements and common measurements of PM2.5 or PM10 by linear mixed model.Conclusions:It is feasible to use mobile devices to monitor daily cardiopulmonary signs and personal exposure of particulate matter. We can apply this method to more studies by expanding sample number, improving instrument function and strengthening manipulation training as well.