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Airborne particles in indoor environment of homes, schools, offices and aged care facilities: The main routes of exposure
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Airborne particles in indoor environment of homes, schools, offices and aged care facilities: The main routes of exposure

L. Morawska, G. A. Ayoko, G. N. Bae, G. Buonanno, C. Y. H. Chao, S. Clifford, S. C. Fu, O. Hanninen, C. He, C. Isaxon, …
Environment international, v 108, pp 75-83
01 Nov 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2017.07.025
PMID: 28802170
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2017.07.025View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY-NC-ND V4.0,  Open

Abstract

Environmental Sciences Environmental Sciences & Ecology Life Sciences & Biomedicine Science & Technology
It has been shown that the exposure to airborne particulate matter is one of the most significant environmental risks people face. Since indoor environment is where people spend the majority of time, in order to protect against this risk, the origin of the particles needs to be understood: do they come from indoor, outdoor sources or both? Further, this question needs to be answered separately for each of the PM mass/number size fractions, as they originate from different sources. Numerous studies have been conducted for specific indoor environments or under specific setting. Here our aim was to go beyond the specifics of individual studies, and to explore, based on pooled data from the literature, whether there are generalizable trends in routes of exposure at homes, schools and day cares, offices and aged care facilities. To do this, we quantified the overall 24 h and occupancy weighted means of PM10, PM2.5 and PN -particle number concentration. Based on this, we developed a summary of the indoor versus outdoor origin of indoor particles and compared the means to the WHO guidelines (for PM10 and PM2.5) and to the typical levels reported for urban environments (PN). We showed that the main origins of particle metrics differ from one type of indoor environment to another. For homes, outdoor air is the main origin of PM10 and PM2.5 but PN originate from indoor sources; for schools and day cares, outdoor air is the source of PN while PM10 and PM2.5 have indoor sources; and for offices, outdoor air is the source of all three particle size fractions. While each individual building is different, leading to differences in exposure and ideally necessitating its own assessment (which is very rarely done), our findings point to the existence of generalizable trends for the main types of indoor environments where people spend time, and therefore to the type of prevention measures which need to be considered in general for these environments.

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285 citations in Web of Science
310 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being
#11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Environmental Sciences
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