Glycols indoor concentrations

Singer, B.C., Destaillats, H., Hodgson, A.T. and Nazaroff, W.W. (2006b) Cleaning products and air fresheners emissions and resulting concentrations of glycol ethers and terpenoids. Indoor Air, 16,179-91. 

It is a known fact that many freshly printed books and journals have strong odor. In a particularly severe case, school children complained that they were irritated when they touched a schoolbook with a PVC cover. To find out the reasons, the book was conditioned for 24h and put into a 23.5-1 chamber with open pages at T = 23 °C, RH = 45% and N = 1.0h"1. Sampling was performed after 24h and 48h. As shown in Table 15.3, very high emissions of aromatic hydrocarbons, glycols and other compounds were observed. In addition, a chamber test carried out on issue 4/96 of Indoor Air journal showed that it had an unpleasant smell. The main components detected in the chamber air were formaldehyde (335 (tg/m3), hexanal (15 xg/m3), toluene (123 ( Lg/tn3) and aliphatic hydrocarbons (>C10) (100—150 (xg/ m3). Higher aliphatic aldehydes (C7-C11) appeared in concentrations <10 tg/rn3. 

Table 1.9-3. Indoor air concentration values of glycol derivatives (ng/m ) (Plieninger, 1998).

In its discussion of human health effects, HC used data obtained in animal studies and uncertainty factors to calculate a tolerable dose over a lifetime of exposure. Short-term exposure was evaluated separately. As stated in its report, HC concluded that long-term or chronic exposure to ethylene glycol is not likely to present a human health problem, but that short-term (acute) exposures to indoor air concentrations from certain consumer products may exceed a tolerable concentration using necessary conservative assumptions. The language that HC used to explain its findings and conclusions are as follows ... 

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