Polycyclic and nitro musks in indoor air: a primary school classroom and a women's sport center.

UNLABELLED: Indoor air gas and particulate-phase samples (PM(2.5) ) were collected from a primary school classroom and a women's sport center because children are one of the sensitive population subgroups and women are frequent users of personal care products in addition to the high level of activity in this specific microenvironment. PM(2.5) was collected with a Harvard impactor, and polyurethane foam was used for the gas phase. Samples were ultrasonically extracted, concentrated, and analyzed with a GC-MS. The mean gas-phase concentrations in the classroom ranged from 0.12 ± 0.2 ng/m(3) for MK to 267 ± 56 ng/m(3) for HHCB, while it was from 0.08 ± 0.10 ng/m(3) for AHMI to 144 ± 61 ng/m(3) for HHCB in the sports center. Particulate-phase average concentrations in the sports center ranged from 0.22 ± 0.11 ng/m(3) for ATII to 1.34 ± 071 ng/m(3) for AHTN, while it ranged from 0.05 ± 0.02 ng/m(3) (musk xylene) to 2.50 ± 0.94 ng/m(3) (HHCB) in the classroom. Exposure-risk assessment showed that inhalation route is most probably far less significant than the dermal route; however, it should be noted that the exposure duration covered in this study was not the larger fraction of the day. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Synthetic musk compounds (SMCs) are found everywhere because their use in household and personal care products (laundry detergents, carpet cleaners, cleaning agents, fabric softener soaps, shampoos, cosmetics, etc.) has been increasing. These compounds are semi-volatiles that may result in direct and indirect exposures through inhalation route. Although SMCs were found to be dominant in the gas phase, exposure via inhalable particles may be important as we found several compounds in the particulate phase (PM(2.5)).

The link between symptoms of office building occupants and in-office air pollution: the Indoor Air Pollution Index.

The lack of an effective indoor air quality (IAQ) metric causes communication concerns among building tenants (the public), building managers (decision-makers), and IAQ investigators (engineers). The Indoor Air Pollution Index (IAPI) is developed for office buildings to bridge this communication discord. The index, simple and easily understood, employs the range of pollutant concentrations and concentrations in the subject building to estimate a unitless single number, the IAPI, between 0 (lowest pollution level and best IAQ) and ten (highest pollution level and worst IAQ). The index provides a relative measure of indoor air pollution for office buildings and ranks office indoor air pollution relative to the index distribution of the US office building population. Furthermore, the index associates well with occupant symptoms, percentage of occupants with persistent symptoms. A tree-structured method is utilized in conjunction with the arithmetic mean as the aggregation function. The hierarchical structure of the method renders not only one index value, but also several sub-index values that are critical in the study of an office air environment. The use of the IAPI for IAQ management is illustrated with an example. The decomposition of the index leads to the ranking of sampled pollutants by their relative contribution to the index and the identification of dominant pollutant(s). This information can be applied to design an effective strategy for reducing in-office air pollution.