title: Land use regression modeling of ultrafine particles, ozone, nitrogen oxides and markers of particulate matter pollution in Augsburg, Germany.
abstract: Important health relevance has been suggested for ultrafine particles (UFP) and ozone, but studies on long-term effects are scarce, mainly due to the lack of appropriate spatial exposure models. We designed a measurement campaign to develop land use regression (LUR) models to predict the spatial variability focusing on particle number concentration (PNC) as indicator for UFP, ozone and several other air pollutants in the Augsburg region, Southern Germany. Three bi-weekly measurements of PNC, ozone, particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5), soot (PM2.5abs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx, NO2) were performed at 20 sites in 2014/15. Annual average concentration were calculated and temporally adjusted by measurements from a continuous background station. As geographic predictors we offered several traffic and land use variables, altitude, population and building density. Models were validated using leave-one-out cross-validation. Adjusted model explained variance (R2) was high for PNC and ozone (0.89 and 0.88). Cross-validation adjusted R2was slightly lower (0.82 and 0.81) but still indicated a very good fit. LUR models for other pollutants performed well with adjusted R2between 0.68 (PMcoarse) and 0.94 (NO2). Contrary to previous studies, ozone showed a moderate correlation with NO2(Pearson's r=-0.26). PNC was moderately correlated with ozone and PM2.5, but highly correlated with NOx(r=0.91). For PNC and NOx, LUR models comprised similar predictors and future epidemiological analyses evaluating health effects need to consider these similarities.
authors.affiliation: Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health (GmbH), Institute of Epidemiology II, Neuherberg, Germany. Electronic address: kathrin.wolf@helmholtz-muenchen.de.
authors.forename: Kathrin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wolf
authors.affiliation: Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health (GmbH), Institute of Epidemiology II, Neuherberg, Germany; Environmental Science Center, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Josef
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cyrys
authors.affiliation: Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Cartography, Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing, Bratislava, Slovakia.
authors.forename: Tatiana
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Harciníková
authors.affiliation: Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health (GmbH), Institute of Epidemiology II, Neuherberg, Germany; Environmental Science Center, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Jianwei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gu
authors.affiliation: Environmental Science Center, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kusch
authors.affiliation: Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health (GmbH), Institute of Epidemiology II, Neuherberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Regina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hampel
authors.affiliation: Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health (GmbH), Institute of Epidemiology II, Neuherberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.affiliation: Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health (GmbH), Institute of Epidemiology II, Neuherberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Annette
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Peters
mesh_terms: D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D000397:Air Pollution / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000531:Altitude; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D005858:Germany; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009589:Nitrogen Oxides / Q000032:analysis*; D010126:Ozone / Q000032:analysis*; D052638:Particulate Matter / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D000393:Air Pollutants; D009589:Nitrogen Oxides; D052638:Particulate Matter; D010126:Ozone
keywords: Land use regression; Ozone; Particle number concentration; Particulate matter; Ultrafine particles