Depending on your budget:

===== Gases

- Trace gases automatic analysers (O3, NOx, SO2), expensive but... automatic!!

- Bubblers: titration with KI (O3), Saltzmann colorimetry (NOx), West and Gaeke colorimetry (SO2), rather cheap but a lot of manual work.

==== Particles (PM10, PM 2.5)

- Laser particle counter (many brands)

- Filter opacimetry

- Filter weighing (with a scale or using a TEOM)

- Low cost nephelometer

High level episodes can be monitored using satellite products (aerosols, NO, CO, O3.)

For the heath effect you can follow hospital emergency counting and relate it to air pollution parameters.

This course might offer you some insights: https://online-learning.harvard.edu/course/health-effects-climate-change

Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) is of great concern to the public because of the health effects and haze episodes associated with it. PM has the strong potential for adsorbing toxic metals which have both carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic effects and determine the mobility and bioavailability of the PM, thus in return, also determining the potential risks to the environment.

So these are the following topic could be useful for your research work

1. Gaseous air pollutants

2. Characterization of Particulate Matters and Heavy Metal Analysis

3. PAHs

4. Source apportionment study by PMF

5. Pulmonary Function Test

6. Carcinogenic and Non-carcinogenic effects (Cancer and Non Cancer)

7. Anti-Oxidant Activities

I would suggest to read these papers

1. Ghosh, S., Rabha, R., Chowdhury, M., & Padhy, P. K. (2018). Source and chemical species characterization of PM10 and human health risk assessment of semi-urban, urban and industrial areas of West Bengal, India. Chemosphere, 207, 626-636.

2. Rabha, R., Ghosh, S., & Padhy, P. K. (2018). Indoor air pollution in rural north-east India: Elemental compositions, changes in haematological indices, oxidative stress and health risks. Ecotoxicology and environmental safety, 165, 393-403.

3. Rabha, R., Ghosh, S., & Padhy, P. K. (2018). Effects of biomass burning on pulmonary functions in tribal women in northeastern India. Women & health, 1-11.

Have you ever checked if the health authority in your country has already started to carry out air monitoring? this could be a pragmatic start. If they have already started to deply environmental instrumentation, then your Institution may apply for data access and following elaboration. once you get started and learn about the topic then you can work on fundings for buying instrumentation and so on.

Laura Tositti

Thank you for your recommendation on the data accessibility from national air monitoring stations.But ,in Ethiopia only two functional air monitoring stations are viable which are not sufficient for model development.

Sure you're right. But these two station will help to compare

You need to buy a meteo station first, learn where and how to install it and manage it. With a limited investment you can also buy one basic station for air pollution monitoring instead of the official and costly instruments of protection agencies: these stations are not equivalent, but you can choose some which are half way professional and sufficiently reliable. They are based on an assemmbly of smart sensors which have limited duration especially for gases like ozone and NO2 (check their detection limit and compare them with atmospheric concentrations espected for your region, latitude and meteoclimatic conditions - the suppliers MUST be very experienced in atmospheric monitoring . now there are thousands of suppliers of gas sensors, but only a few are suitable for air as concentrations are very low even in the case of exceedances!). Before installing a sensor-based monitoring station for air pollution my advice is to use it for 1-2 weeks continuously aside the canonical instruments, i.e. in one of the locations where monitoring is officially carried out. In this case calibration is checked as in monitoring stations this activity is very careful and subjected to strict protocols. The canonical instruments serve as secondary standards for yours.

Of course this is to begin and to get acquainted with atmospheric monitoring. Air pollution is a highly fluctuating phenomenology , so you first need to recognize daily patterns at the subdaily time resolution to extend it to seasonal and then to annual/interannual variability, using very basic parameters

How about IMS (ion mobility spectrometry) that allows you to analyze a full spectrum of chemicals as much as possible including elementary particles. This is not an average atmospheric monitoring instrument but lab precision instrument. The health impacts are already known for example metals like iron and platinum from exhaust pipes of cars and trucks are causing dementia and other ailments. If you can see documentary called something in the air by nature of things: https://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episodes/something-in-the-air. In that show you will see some high tech instruments used in monitoring air quality. High concentration of human population and transportation like cities with highways and streets have high cases of dementia.

Atmospheric composition is highly variable in time and space. Smart sensors are useful only if you have few monitoring stations making air quality data a reference and from which to extract actual detailed pollution information. In this framework, cheap pollution stations can be used to compensate for spatial dishomogeneity in data and to provide instant knowledge of exposure. By no means these devices can replace costly but necessary instrumentation. in the case of Habtamou, it is clear that the budget is the determinant! however a clever organization of work may help even at low expenses