The Impact of Short-Term Exposure to Air Pollution on the Exhaled Breath of Healthy Adults
Ariana Lammers,
Anne H. Neerincx,
Susanne J. H. Vijverberg,
Cristina Longo,
Nicole A. H. Janssen,
A. John F. Boere,
Paul Brinkman,
Flemming R. Cassee,
Anke H. Maitland van der Zee
Affiliations
Ariana Lammers
Amsterdam UMC, Department of Respiratory Medicine, University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Anne H. Neerincx
Amsterdam UMC, Department of Respiratory Medicine, University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Susanne J. H. Vijverberg
Amsterdam UMC, Department of Respiratory Medicine, University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Cristina Longo
Amsterdam UMC, Department of Respiratory Medicine, University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Nicole A. H. Janssen
Centre for Sustainability, Environment and Health, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Antonie van Leeuwenhoeklaan 9, 3721 MA Bilthoven, The Netherlands
A. John F. Boere
Centre for Sustainability, Environment and Health, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Antonie van Leeuwenhoeklaan 9, 3721 MA Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Paul Brinkman
Amsterdam UMC, Department of Respiratory Medicine, University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Flemming R. Cassee
Centre for Sustainability, Environment and Health, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Antonie van Leeuwenhoeklaan 9, 3721 MA Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Anke H. Maitland van der Zee
Amsterdam UMC, Department of Respiratory Medicine, University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Environmental factors, such as air pollution, can affect the composition of exhaled breath, and should be well understood before biomarkers in exhaled breath can be used in clinical practice. Our objective was to investigate whether short-term exposures to air pollution can be detected in the exhaled breath profile of healthy adults. In this study, 20 healthy young adults were exposed 2–4 times to the ambient air near a major airport and two highways. Before and after each 5 h exposure, exhaled breath was analyzed using an electronic nose (eNose) consisting of seven different cross-reactive metal-oxide sensors. The discrimination between pre and post-exposure was investigated with multilevel partial least square discriminant analysis (PLSDA), followed by linear discriminant and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, for all data (71 visits), and for a training (51 visits) and validation set (20 visits). Using all eNose measurements and the training set, discrimination between pre and post-exposure resulted in an area under the ROC curve of 0.83 (95% CI = 0.76–0.89) and 0.84 (95% CI = 0.75–0.92), whereas it decreased to 0.66 (95% CI = 0.48–0.84) in the validation set. Short-term exposure to high levels of air pollution potentially influences the exhaled breath profiles of healthy adults, however, the effects may be minimal for regular daily exposures.
