Personal and neighborhood low-cost monitoring to change air pollution awareness, perceptions, and behaviors: A Case Study in Gabon, Africa
摘要
Air pollution is a global issue mainly affecting people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), but research and regulations on air pollution are limited in these regions. This leads to reduced environmental health literacy, a major barrier to addressing air pollution. This study aims to evaluate how low-cost air sensors influence awareness, perceptions, and behaviors towards air pollution in Libreville, Gabon. We enrolled 102 participants in the study, which took place from January to March 2022. We examined the influence of access to air pollution data using two interventions: one group (N = 60) observed neighborhood measurements, and the other group (N = 42) carried personal air sensors for one week. We surveyed participants before and after monitoring to assess changes in awareness, perceptions, and behaviors toward air pollution. Compared to pre-intervention measures, participants’ awareness, perceptions, and behaviors toward air pollution improved. The largest change was observed in awareness of air pollution’s health impacts, with mean awareness increasing by 0.23 (95% CI: 0.01–0.46) on a 1–5 Likert scale for the statement, “I know about air pollution and its impacts on health,” after monitoring. We did not observe statistically significant changes for perception and behavior questions or for differences in the amount of change between the neighborhood and personal monitoring groups; exploratory analyses by age, sex, income, and exposure levels yielded similar results to the main analysis. Qualitative findings confirmed that access to air pollution data drove these changes.
Our results show that access to monitoring data can substantially change air pollution health literacy and support actions to address air pollution in LMICs.