Air Toxicity Surveillance across Thirteen Cities Using Rats

Current monitoring methods fail to assess air toxicity in real time, which is yet badly desired to better estimate the health impact. Here, we developed and deployed an automated, low-cost, and time-resolved system for noninvasive monitoring of air toxicity by detecting eight breath-borne biomarkers from rats, including VOCs, CO<sub>2</sub>, CO, NO, H<sub>2</sub>S, H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub>, O<sub>2</sub>, and NH<sub>3</sub>. Using this system, two large-scale monitoring campaigns were conducted across 13 cities in China during the 2023 winter and 2024 spring continuously on a 24-h-a-day basis. In characterizing overall air pollution health impact, a novel Air Toxic Index (ATI) was developed using the eight breath-borne biomarkers from the rats. Significant differences in diurnal patterns of ATI were observed across 13 cities. Among others, time, city, PM<sub>2.5</sub>, and O<sub>3</sub> were identified as the primary influencing factors of ATI, exhibiting complex nonlinear relationships in real-world environments. The unique variation patterns of breath-borne NO and H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> from rats indicated the time-resolved impacts of ground human activities on weekends and PM components on air toxicity. Histopathologic changes in these deployed rats' lungs further validated the differential health effects of real-world air pollution from different cities as detected by the rat system. Here, we pioneer a new air pollution health effect monitoring system that realizes the in vivo detection of air toxicity in contrast to the traditional protocol of air sampling, exposure, and offline toxicity analysis steps. The system can be deployed easily to any location with minimal support for real-time monitoring of air pollution health impacts.

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Publication Details

Journal
Environmental Science & Technology
Published
2025-04-25
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5c01250
Primary Topic
Advanced Chemical Sensor Technologies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Air Toxicity Surveillance across Thirteen Cities Using Rats

Cuiqing Liu, Huaying Liu, Zhaohe Wang, Maosheng Yao et al.
Environmental Science & Technology
Advanced Chemical Sensor Technologies
article

Air Toxicity Surveillance across Thirteen Cities Using Rats

Cuiqing Liu, Huaying Liu, Zhaohe Wang, Maosheng Yao, Nan Sang, Zhuo Guo, Min Hu, Bin Luo, Qisong Xing, Fang Xiao, Keding Lu, Lian Zhou, Zhijun Wu, Ling Zhao, Qihong Deng, Xinyi Niu, Zhihao Chen, Jinyao Chen, Rui Li, Yicen Lin, Chenyu Zhu, Rong Zhang, Yu Huang
article en

Abstract

Current monitoring methods fail to assess air toxicity in real time, which is yet badly desired to better estimate the health impact. Here, we developed and deployed an automated, low-cost, and time-resolved system for noninvasive monitoring of air toxicity by detecting eight breath-borne biomarkers from rats, including VOCs, CO<sub>2</sub>, CO, NO, H<sub>2</sub>S, H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub>, O<sub>2</sub>, and NH<sub>3</sub>. Using this system, two large-scale monitoring campaigns were conducted across 13 cities in China during the 2023 winter and 2024 spring continuously on a 24-h-a-day basis. In characterizing overall air pollution health impact, a novel Air Toxic Index (ATI) was developed using the eight breath-borne biomarkers from the rats. Significant differences in diurnal patterns of ATI were observed across 13 cities. Among others, time, city, PM<sub>2.5</sub>, and O<sub>3</sub> were identified as the primary influencing factors of ATI, exhibiting complex nonlinear relationships in real-world environments. The unique variation patterns of breath-borne NO and H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> from rats indicated the time-resolved impacts of ground human activities on weekends and PM components on air toxicity. Histopathologic changes in these deployed rats' lungs further validated the differential health effects of real-world air pollution from different cities as detected by the rat system. Here, we pioneer a new air pollution health effect monitoring system that realizes the in vivo detection of air toxicity in contrast to the traditional protocol of air sampling, exposure, and offline toxicity analysis steps. The system can be deployed easily to any location with minimal support for real-time monitoring of air pollution health impacts.

Environmental Science & TechnologyVol. 59(17)
Kunming University of Science and Technology (CN), Hebei Medical University (CN), Zhejiang Chinese Medical University (CN), Central South University (CN), University of Occupational and Environmental Health Japan (JP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Peking University (CN), Sichuan University (CN), Inner Mongolia University (CN), Zhengzhou University (CN), Central China Normal University (CN), The Fourth People's Hospital (CN), Beijing Biocytogen (China) (CN), Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CN), Faculty of Public Health (GB), State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (CN), Shanxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (CN), Institute of Earth Environment (CN), Departement Omgeving, Lanzhou University (CN), Xi'an Jiaotong University (CN)
National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research and Development Program of China
Openalex Percentile: Top 92%
Advanced Chemical Sensor Technologies
DOISourceOpenAlex
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