Level of Education of Students Involved
Undergraduate
Faculty Sponsor
Christopher Iceman
College
College of Arts & Sciences (CAS)
Discipline(s)
Environmental Chemisty
ORCID Identifier(s)
Abraham Orozco: 0009-0008-5796-2952. Emma Bollech: 0009-0003-3671-6174
Presentation Type
Poster Presentation
Symposium Date
Spring 4-2025
Abstract
The quality of the air that we breathe has tremendous impacts on our health; bad air quality can lead to short-term eye, nose, and throat irritation, and long-term chronic respiratory conditions. It is important to monitor air quality and understand what metrics indicate potential hazards, in attempts to better measure the healthiness of communities and indirectly its’ individuals. Not all air sensors are calibrated to measure metrics the same, and this study will compare values across air sensors via the PM2.5 air quality standard. In this study we focus on measuring particulate matter – which can come from dust kicked up on roads from cars, vehicle exhaust, wildfires, industrial site emissions, and more – using PurpleAir sensors located across Northwest Indiana. PurpleAir does not release proprietary information regarding the formulation of parameters included in the Air Quality Index that is posted on their publicly-available website. Due to potential discrepancies between standardized air sensors and PurpleAir instruments, we are evaluating the accuracy of our measurements against industry standard air sensors. In order to more confidently determine PurpleAir measurements’ validity for air quality metrics, we compared them to commercial-grade sensors such as the TSI DustTrak, Thermo Fisher pDR-1500, & DRUMAir cascade impactor using qualitative graphical and quantitative statistical tools. These sensors are of the caliber used by government agencies such as the EPA, and these research efforts provide a novel and necessary service to communities that depend on these sensors as their only local full time air quality measurement. We expect relative trends in particulate matter concentration to be well reproduced amongst the sensors and absolute comparisons to require scaling factors. As part of our community projects, we also study archived air quality measurements in our attempts to inform future community health and policy decisions.
Recommended Citation
Bollech, Emma G.; Orozco, Abraham; and Iceman, Christopher, "Quantitative Comparisons of Three Colocated Air Samplers with Simultaneous PM2.5 [Particulate Matter] Measurements" (2025). Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE). 1396.
https://scholar.valpo.edu/cus/1396
