Real-Time Hospital Air Quality Monitoring Based on a Low-Cost Smart Electronic Device and Health Risk Assessment

This paper reports the real-time air quality measurements and health risk assessment of exposed people in two reference hospitals of Yaoundé City (Biyem-assi District Hospital and Yaoundé Central Hospital), by using a low-cost, locally manufactured smart electronic device. Specially developed for the measurement of atmospheric pollutants responsible for poor air quality, the developed device consists of low-cost components namely Arduino microcontroller board, toxic gases (ozone O3, particle matter PM2.5, carbon monoxide CO, carbon dioxide CO2 and nitrogen dioxide NO2), temperature (T) and, relative humidity (RH) sensors and XBee-based Internet of Things (IoT) wireless transmission modules. Two weeks of measurements were carried out in each hospital. The periodic average values obtained are 0.96 ± 0.06 ppm and 0.37 ± 0.09 ppm for O3, 39.66 ± 10 µg/m3 and 39.72 ± 10 µg/m3 for PM2.5, 0.41 ± 0.01 ppm and 0.42 ± 0.02 ppm for CO, 316.55 ± 63 ppm and 305.84 ± 89 ppm for CO2, and 0.43 ± 0.01 ppm and 0.45 ± 0.02 ppm for NO2 respectively in Biyem-assi hospital and Central hospital. The innovative prototype developed is simple and easy to implement with the advantage of measuring air pollution in real-time in order to assess health effects and environmental impact.