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Long-term analysis of the relationships between indoor and outdoor fine particulate pollution: A case study using research grade sensors

The growing concern of air quality and its associated health-related impacts has led to increased awareness of pollutant exposure. Most human populations spend the majority of their time indoors and the COVID-19 pandemic has likely exacerbated this behavior. While significant amounts of research hav...

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Autores principales: Mendoza, Daniel L., Benney, Tabitha M., Boll, Sarah
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9753328/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33647662
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145778
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author Mendoza, Daniel L.
Benney, Tabitha M.
Boll, Sarah
author_facet Mendoza, Daniel L.
Benney, Tabitha M.
Boll, Sarah
author_sort Mendoza, Daniel L.
collection PubMed
description The growing concern of air quality and its associated health-related impacts has led to increased awareness of pollutant exposure. Most human populations spend the majority of their time indoors and the COVID-19 pandemic has likely exacerbated this behavior. While significant amounts of research have focused on outdoor air quality, to date there have been no studies that examined simultaneous long-term trends on indoor and outdoor air quality on a site using research-grade sensors. We measured fine particulate matter (PM(2.5)) for a year using sensors located on the rooftop, air handling room, and indoor office space in a building and captured the impacts of three types of regularly occurring elevated pollution events: wintertime atmospheric inversions, wildfires, and fireworks. The events had different magnitudes and durations, and infiltration rates varied for each event leading to dissimilar indoor air pollution levels. The building's air handling unit and different environmental conditions (lower indoor humidity and temperature during the winter) combined to reduce indoor pollution from inversion events however, particulate matter from wildfires and fireworks infiltrated at higher rates. Together, this suggests possible intervention strategies, such as ventilation rates and filter upgrades, that could be used to mitigate contaminant intrusion during elevated pollution events. This year-long study illustrates an array of ways that elevated pollution events interact with the protective effects that buildings have against air pollution for its occupants. Furthermore, we show that outdoor air pollution is an important variable to consider when studying indoor air quality as contaminant infiltration is strongly dependent on the specific pollution source.
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spelling pubmed-97533282022-12-15 Long-term analysis of the relationships between indoor and outdoor fine particulate pollution: A case study using research grade sensors Mendoza, Daniel L. Benney, Tabitha M. Boll, Sarah Sci Total Environ Article The growing concern of air quality and its associated health-related impacts has led to increased awareness of pollutant exposure. Most human populations spend the majority of their time indoors and the COVID-19 pandemic has likely exacerbated this behavior. While significant amounts of research have focused on outdoor air quality, to date there have been no studies that examined simultaneous long-term trends on indoor and outdoor air quality on a site using research-grade sensors. We measured fine particulate matter (PM(2.5)) for a year using sensors located on the rooftop, air handling room, and indoor office space in a building and captured the impacts of three types of regularly occurring elevated pollution events: wintertime atmospheric inversions, wildfires, and fireworks. The events had different magnitudes and durations, and infiltration rates varied for each event leading to dissimilar indoor air pollution levels. The building's air handling unit and different environmental conditions (lower indoor humidity and temperature during the winter) combined to reduce indoor pollution from inversion events however, particulate matter from wildfires and fireworks infiltrated at higher rates. Together, this suggests possible intervention strategies, such as ventilation rates and filter upgrades, that could be used to mitigate contaminant intrusion during elevated pollution events. This year-long study illustrates an array of ways that elevated pollution events interact with the protective effects that buildings have against air pollution for its occupants. Furthermore, we show that outdoor air pollution is an important variable to consider when studying indoor air quality as contaminant infiltration is strongly dependent on the specific pollution source. The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. 2021-07-01 2021-02-12 /pmc/articles/PMC9753328/ /pubmed/33647662 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145778 Text en © 2021 The Authors Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Mendoza, Daniel L.
Benney, Tabitha M.
Boll, Sarah
Long-term analysis of the relationships between indoor and outdoor fine particulate pollution: A case study using research grade sensors
title Long-term analysis of the relationships between indoor and outdoor fine particulate pollution: A case study using research grade sensors
title_full Long-term analysis of the relationships between indoor and outdoor fine particulate pollution: A case study using research grade sensors
title_fullStr Long-term analysis of the relationships between indoor and outdoor fine particulate pollution: A case study using research grade sensors
title_full_unstemmed Long-term analysis of the relationships between indoor and outdoor fine particulate pollution: A case study using research grade sensors
title_short Long-term analysis of the relationships between indoor and outdoor fine particulate pollution: A case study using research grade sensors
title_sort long-term analysis of the relationships between indoor and outdoor fine particulate pollution: a case study using research grade sensors
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9753328/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33647662
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145778
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