Exposure models for particulate matter elemental concentrations in Southern California
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Due to a scarcity of routine monitoring of speciated particulate matter (PM), there has been limited capability to develop exposure models that robustly estimate component-specific concentrations. This paper presents the largest such study conducted in a single urban area. Using samples that were collected at 220 locations over two seasons, quasi-ultrafine (PM0.2), accumulation mode fine (PM0.2-2.5), and coarse (PM2.5-10) particulate matter concentrations were used to develop spatiotemporal regression, machine learning models that enabled predictions of 24 elemental components in eight Southern California communities. We used supervised variable selection of over 150 variables, largely from publicly available sources, including meteorological, roadway and traffic characteristics, land use, and dispersion model estimates of traffic emissions. PM components that have high oxidative potential (and potentially large health effects) or are otherwise important markers for major PM sources were the primary focus. We present results for copper, iron, and zinc (as non-tailpipe vehicle emissions); elemental carbon (diesel emissions); vanadium (ship emissions); calcium (soil dust); and sodium (sea salt). Spatiotemporal linear regression models with 17 to 36 predictor variables including meteorology; distance to different classifications of roads; intersections and off ramps within a given buffer distance; truck and vehicle traffic volumes; and near-roadway dispersion model estimates produced superior predictions over the machine learning approaches (cross validation R-squares ranged from 0.76 to 0.92). Our models are easily interpretable and appear to have more effectively captured spatial gradients in the metallic portion of PM than other comparably large studies, particularly near roadways for the non-tailpipe emissions. Furthermore, we demonstrated the importance of including spatiotemporally resolved meteorology in our models as it helped to provide key insights into spatial patterns and allowed us to make temporal predictions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".