In recent years, the use of synthetic materials in\ud
building and furnishing, the adoption of new lifestyles, the\ud
extensive use of products for environmental cleaning and\ud
personal hygiene have contributed to the deterioration of\ud
indoor air quality and introduced new sources of risk to\ud
humans. Indoor environments include home, workplaces\ud
such as offices, public buildings such as hospitals, schools,\ud
kindergartens, sports halls, libraries, restaurants and bars,\ud
theaters and cinemas and finally cabins of vehicles. Indoor\ud
environments in schools have been of particular public\ud
concern. According to recent studies, children aged\ud
between 3 and 14 spend 90 % of the day indoors both in\ud
winter and summer. Moreover, children have greater susceptibility\ud
to some environmental pollutants than adults,\ud
because they breathe higher volumes of air relative to their\ud
body weights, and their tissues and organs are actively\ud
growing. In this review, the authors explore the methodological\ud
approaches used for the assessment of air quality in schools: monitoring strategies, sampling and analysis\ud
techniques and summarizing an overview of main findings\ud
from scientific literature concerning the most common\ud
pollutants found in school environments
Children are more sensitive to pollutants than adults and yet they spend large amounts of time in school environments where they are exposed to unknown levels of indoor pollutants. This study investigated the concentrations of the most abundant volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in eight naturally ventilated school buildings in Italy. The schools were chosen to include areas with different urbanization and traffic density characteristics in order to gather a more diverse picture of exposure risks in the different areas of the city. VOCs were sampled for one week in the presence/absence of pupils using diffusive samplers suitable for thermal desorption inside three classrooms at each school. The samples were then analyzed with thermal desorption-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (TD-GC-MS). In addition, outdoor measurements were carried out in the yard at each school. VOC identification and quantification, and indoor/outdoor concentration plots were used to identify pollutant sources. While some classrooms were found to have very low VOC levels, others had a significant indoor contribution or a prevalent outdoor contribution. High concentrations of terpenes were found in all monitored classrooms: α-pinene and limonene were in the range of 6.55–34.18 µg/m3 and 11.11–25.42 µg/m3 respectively. Outdoor concentrations were lower than indoors for each monitored school. Indicators based on health risk assessment for chronic health effects associated with VOCs (either carcinogenic or non-carcinogenic) were proposed to rank sites according to their hazard level.
The atmosphere is a carrier on which some natural and anthropogenic organic and inorganic chemicals are transported, and the wet and dry deposition events are the most important processes that remove those chemicals, depositing it on soil and water. A wide variety of different collectors were tested to evaluate site-specificity, seasonality and daily variability of settleable particle concentrations. Deposition fluxes of POPs showed spatial and seasonal variations, diagnostic ratios of PAHs on deposited particles, allowed the discrimination between pyrolytic or petrogenic sources. Congener pattern analysis and bulk deposition fluxes in rural sites confirmed long-range atmospheric transport of PCDDs/Fs. More and more sophisticated and newly designed deposition samplers have being used for characterization of deposited mercury, demonstrating the importance of rain scavenging and the relatively higher magnitude of Hg deposition from Chinese anthropogenic sources. Recently biological monitors demonstrated that PAH concentrations in lichens were comparable with concentrations measured in a conventional active sampler in an outdoor environment. In this review the authors explore the methodological approaches used for the assessment of atmospheric deposition, from the analysis of the sampling methods, the analytical procedures for chemical characterization of pollutants and the main results from the scientific literature.
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