VitalAir: Wearable Air Quality Monitoring Platform for Personal Exposure

Air pollution is a pressing global health concern that is linked to respiratory and cardiovascular complications. Conventional air quality monitoring systems, mainly fixed stations, lack the capability to assess individual exposure. Additionally, existing wearable air quality monitors often neglect the integration of vital physiological data such as heart rate and oxygen saturation, crucial for real-time health monitoring. To address these, a wearable air quality monitoring platform called VitalAir incorporates heart rate and oxygen saturation measurements. VitalAir consists of micro-controller units and sensor modules, measuring parameters such as temperature, humidity, particulate matter PM
2.5
, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone. These data, along with heart rate and oxygen saturation, are processed and displayed in real-time through a mobile application that facilitates real-time processing and display of relevant information. Accuracy was assessed against commercial alternatives, and power consumption was measured to determine battery life. Results exhibit the air quality module is capable of accurately monitoring temperature, humidity and PM
2.5
, with PM
2.5
having the highest accuracy with $R^{2}=0.987.$ Results also suggest the satisfactory performance of the physiological module in monitoring heart rate, with $MAE=2.73\mathrm{b}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{m}.$ The air quality and physiology modules last an estimated 28.19 h and 51.66 h, respectively. Both were successfully integrated with the mobile application and relevant data stored in the online UP CARE Platform. Thus, VitalAir proves to be a viable wearable implementation in monitoring and assessing the physiological and personal air quality exposure of the user.