Indoor air survey

Feb Competition and Business Strategy Product Design (1) Indoor air survey (2) Prototype Chemical Design and Processing (1) Adsorbents (2) Catalysts. Process Safety Analysis Process Control and Instrumentation Environmental Impact Assessemsnt Report Writing... 

Indoor air survey was carried out for Hong Kong domestic homes, as there are no available data in this category at the time. A clear understanding of the local indoor air pollution problem is invaluable for the success of the product. 

Table 12.6-4. Description of the sites chosen for indoor air survey...

In the radon surveys the primary quantity determined is the indoor air mean radon activity concentration. From a radiological health perspective it is the dose arising from the inhalation of radon daughters that is of interest. The conversion from radon exposure to annualised effective dose equivalent for the survey was carried out using the factors given in Table I which are similar to those being used in other European surveys. The occupancy and equilibrium factors given in this table are assumed mean values for Irish... 

The national indoor air radon survey commenced in the autumn of 1985. In this first phase of the work radon detectors were sent to 400 randomly selected households throughout Ireland, A further 400 households are scheduled to receive detectors by the end of April 1986. At the time of writing radon detectors from a total of 220 households have been recovered and processed. The principal results obtained are shown in Table II, together with the results of the earlier pilot survey and the cumulative results for both sets of data. 

Before addressing the question of the health impacts of radon and its decay products, the levels that have been found in indoor air will be reviewed. During the past decade, there has been an increasing number of surveys on the concentrations of airborne radioactivity in homes and other structures. A number of systematic national surveys have been conducted during the past five years so that there is substantial information available on radon concentrations in many European countries and Canada. A summary of these studies is presented in Table II. 

Table 12.6-6. Hong Kong indoor air quality survey.

Table 6 Literature survey on levels of most commonly used phthalates and their substitutes in house dust (median concentrations and in brackets P95 concentrations, results expressed in pg/g) and in indoor air samples (median concentrations, results expressed in ng/m )... 

A recently published book provides an excellent survey of issues that relate to contamination with endotoxins (present in both viable and nonviable bacteria), their released cell wall constituents, and also viable bacteria in the pharmaceutical industry [1]. It is important to know both the content of the work environment (e.g., indoor air) and the pharmaceutical products themselves. The former provides information on possible sources of microbial contamination and the latter the purity of the final commercial product (or precursors in various stages in its preparation). In some cases it is vital to know the actual bacterial species involved in contamination culture-based methods are standard microbiological techniques which were the focus of Jimenez [1] and thus will not be discussed further. Any contamination (e.g., with endotoxins), regardless of the species of origin, is of utmost of importance (e.g., in determining the safety of a batch of antibiotics to be administered intravenously). This is determined optimally by non-culture-based methods. 

Diffusive samplers have been applied in major studies of indoor air quality including national surveys, particularly in homes. The benefits of relatively low cost, no noise and unobtrusive appearance, the practicality of placement by persons in receipt of a relatively low level of training and ability to mail samplers between the laboratory and field site are important for these applications. 

In France, a permanent national survey of indoor air quality has been established (Kirchner et al., 2003). A pilot investigation was conducted in 2001 involving 90 dwellings across three geographical areas. Radial passive samplers were used, one type containing a Carbograph cylinder that could be thermally desorbed for VOCs and another impregnated with DNPH for aldehydes that was solvent desorbed. Results for selected VOCs based on 62 measurements in kitchens are included in Table 3.2. 

Kirchner, S., Gauvin, S., Golliot, F., Ramalho, O. and Pennequin, A. (2003) French permanent survey on indoor air quality-microenvironmental concentrations of volatile organic compounds in 90 French dwellings. Proceedings of Healthy Buildings 2003, December, 7-11, Singapore, pp. 349-54. 

Becker, K., Seiwert, M., Kaus, S., Krause, C., Schulz, C. and Seifert, B. (2002) German environmental survey 1998 (GerES III) pesticides and other pollutants in house dust. Proceedings of Indoor Air 2002(4), pp. 883-7. 

Measurements of exposure parameters—for example, the indoor air concentrations of chemicals, time-activity patterns and the chemical composition of consumer products—will as a rule be subject to errors inherent in the methodology used, such as errors in the analytical methods used to measure chemical concentrations or inaccuracies in the survey data due to incorrect reporting by the participants. These errors may be categorized as random or systematic (biased) errors ... 

Triebig G, Zober MA. 1984. Indoor air pollution by smoke constituents- - a survey. Prev Med 13 570-581. 

US EPA surveys of well drinking water sources showed that 74% of the sources had radon concentrations below 100 Bq/L and only 5% had concentrations above 400 Bq/L. The high levels were linked to deep wells. A concentration of 400 Bq/L will increase the indoor air radon concentration by about 0.04 Bq/L. Other sources of radon are ... 

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