Concurrent assessment of personal, indoor, and outdoor PM(2.5) and PM(1) levels and source contributions using novel low‐cost sensing devices

The intensity, frequency, duration, and contribution of distinct PM(2.5) sources in Asian households have seldom been assessed; these are evaluated in this work with concurrent personal, indoor, and outdoor PM(2.5) and PM(1) monitoring using novel low‐cost sensing (LCS) devices, AS‐LUNG. GRIMM‐comparable observations were acquired by the corrected AS‐LUNG readings, with R (2) up to 0.998. Twenty‐six non‐smoking healthy adults were recruited in Taiwan in 2018 for 7‐day personal, home indoor, and home outdoor PM monitoring. The results showed 5‐min PM(2.5) and PM(1) exposures of 11.2 ± 10.9 and 10.5 ± 9.8 µg/m(3), respectively. Cooking occurred most frequently; cooking with and without solid fuel contributed to high PM(2.5) increments of 76.5 and 183.8 µg/m(3) (1 min), respectively. Incense burning had the highest mean PM(2.5) indoor/outdoor (1.44 ± 1.44) ratios at home and on average the highest 5‐min PM(2.5) increments (15.0 µg/m(3)) to indoor levels, among all single sources. Certain events accounted for 14.0%‐39.6% of subjects’ daily exposures. With the high resolution of AS‐LUNG data and detailed time‐activity diaries, the impacts of sources and ventilations were assessed in detail.