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Community science has increased in popularity in communities where residents hope to investigate the relationship between environmental issues and personal health. This study partnered with neighborhoods in the most polluted residential zip code in the US to conduct community science air quality monitoring. We conducted 60 semi-structured interviews after two monitoring deployments to understand participants’ subjective experiences of pollution exposure, their engagement with low-cost air quality monitors, and their data interpretation. We utilize the environmental health concept ‘exposure experience’ to analyze how participants use personal monitors, understand their data, and reinterpret their pollution exposure as a result. We further explore how participants’ understandings are circumscribed by the technological features of low-cost monitors. We find that participants adopt both protective and mitigating behavioral changes based on information gained from personal experiments and hypothesis testing while using the monitors. Of their own accord, 40% of participants in this study adopted mitigation behaviors after identifying sources that impacted their personal air quality. Our analysis reveals that real-time data accessibility through low-cost monitors builds exposure awareness and enables residents of environmental justice communities to test, validate, or invalidate sensory experiences and challenge existing assumptions. These findings point to specific pathways for using low-cost monitors to support individual decision-making and contribute to behavioral change. Findings also identify some limitations of low-cost monitors; designers of low-cost monitors should consider how composite Air Quality Scores may encourage community scientists to equally value scientifically-established pollutants (e.g., PM) with less scientifically-established pollutants (e.g., TVOCs), without additional scientific training and health-related information. 

The large-scale deployment of Do-it-yourself (DIY) air cleaners, especially in communities that historically bear the brunt of air pollution exposure-related injustices, provides communities a cost-effective option to reduce personal indoor exposure to particulate matter. In this study, we developed nine air cleaner prototypes, altering filter depth and the number and type of filters, and compared their PM2.5 removal effectiveness and maintenance-related parameters prior to deployment in North Denver, Colorado homes. Prototypes containing multiple high efficiency particulate air filters with a minimum reporting value of 13 (MERV13) had higher clean air delivery rates (CADR, >300 m3 h−1) compared to prototypes using a single filter (100–200 m3 h−1), but single-filter designs had comparable values of CADR normalized by initial and annual operating costs. Based on performance, cost, build time, and feedback from the community regarding concerns related to volatile organic compound exposure, the selected prototype (P9) used a combination of an activated carbon filter and single MERV13 filter with a 10.16 cm (4-inch) depth. Following this assessment, 120 of the selected air cleaner prototypes were built and deployed in homes around the communities in North Denver for two separate cohorts; feedback regarding their usage over the course of the deployment showed that in addition to the increased noise levels perceived by the participants, factors such as cold air flow from the air cleaner impacting the thermal comfort and aesthetics of the design reduced their usage time in homes. Future designs of DIY air cleaners could incorporate this feedback to help design improved features such as quieter air cleaners and real-time pollutant monitoring feedback to prompt users to keep them operational at all times of the day.