Modeling personal exposure to traffic related air pollutants

The first part of this thesis is about the VE3SPA project. Land use regression (LUR) models are often used to predict the outdoor air pollution at the home address of study participants, to study long-term effects of air pollution. While several studies have documented that PM2.5 mass measured at a central site correlates well in time with personal exposure, little is known about how well spatial variation of home outdoor concentration predictions represent personal exposure. For this project, outdoor and indoor concentrations were measured at 15 participants in Utrecht (the Netherlands), Helsinki (Finland) and Barcelona (Spain). Simultaneously, the personal exposure was measured for these 45 participants using pump units in small backpacks. Measurements were conducted for 6 times 96 hours (Monday- Friday) in three different seasons (winter, summer and spring/autumn). The aim was to assess the association between LUR predicted home outdoor concentrations and measured personal exposure of particulate matter with a diameter of