Prediction of the oxidation potential of PM2.5 exposures from pollutant composition and sources

The inherent oxidation potential (OP) of atmospheric particulate matter has been shown to be an important metric in assessing the biological activity of inhaled particulate matter and is associated with the composition of PM2.5. The current study examined the chemical composition of 388 personal PM2.5 samples collected from students and guards living in urban and suburban areas of Beijing, and assessed the ability to predict OP from the calculated metrics of carcinogenic risk, represented by ELCR (excess lifetime cancer risk), non-carcinogenic risk represented by HI (hazard index), and the composition and sources of the particulate matter using multiple linear regression methods. The correlations between calculated ELCR and HI and the measured OP were 0.37 and 0.7, respectively. HI was a better predictor of OP than ELCR. The prediction models based on pollutants (Model_1) and pollution sources (Model_2) were constructed by multiple linear regression method, and Pearson correlation coefficients between the predicted results of Model_1 and Model_2 with the measured volume normalized OP are 0.81 and 0.80, showing good prediction ability. Previous investigations in Europe and North America have developed location-specific relationships between the chemical composition of particulate matter and OP using regression methods. We also examined the ability of relationships between OP and composition, sources, developed in Europe and North America, to predict the OP of particulate matter in Beijing from the composition and sources determined in Beijing. The relationships developed in Europe and North America provided good predictive ability in Beijing and it suggests that these relationships can be used to predict OP from the chemical composition measured in other regions of the world.

Automated summary

This study investigated the ability to predict the inherent oxidation potential (OP) of particulate matter (PM) in Beijing based on the chemical composition, pollutants, and sources. The results showed that the calculated metrics of excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR) and hazard index (HI) could predict the OP of PM, and the prediction models based on pollution sources performed better than those based on pollutants. Additionally, the relationships developed in Europe and North America were found to have good predictive ability in Beijing, suggesting their applicability to other regions.