Ozone in Indoor Environments: Concentration and Chemistry

This study focuses on the variability in chemical exposures for individuals working in office buildings. The study involved eight office buildings with 79 participants, and exposures were measured using personal samplers for volatile organic compounds, aldehydes, amines, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and particles. Ventilation was assessed in each individual office. ''Variability among buildings'' and ''variability among individuals'' were evaluated for any component (of the 123) measured in samples from at least 20 persons, using variance component analysis and principal component analysis. Interpersonal differences explained the major part of the variance for 78% of the compounds versus between-buildings differences for 14% of the compounds. For 8% of compounds, the variation was explained in equal amounts by the differences among individuals and among buildings. This study illustrates the necessity for individualised measurements (versus stationary measurements in building) to estimate personal exposures. These results also support the conculsion that in case-referent studies of ''sick building syndrome'' (SBS), referents to SBS cases can be randomised for building location.

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variability of personal chemical exposure in eight office buildings in Sweden

Glas

Levin

Stenberg

et al. 2004

“…Previous studies suggested the great deviation of indoor O 3 from outdoor O 3 concentrations and the variations of indoor O 3 concentrations from room-to-room, structure-tostructure (Hayes, 1991;Weschler, 2000), which makes it difficult to evaluate the indoor O 3 exposure of the subjects using outdoor O 3 concentrations. The exposure error may occur when the O 3 concentrations were monitored in the ambient stations and HRV indices were measured when the subjects were indoors, which were conducted in previous studies (Gold et al, 2000;Holguin et al, 2003;Liao et al, 2004;Park et al, 2005;Schwartz et al, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Considering great variations of indoor O 3 from roomto-room and structure-to-structure (Weschler, 2000), which makes it very difficult to evaluate the indoor O 3 exposures of the subjects, we chose the HRV measured when the subjects were outdoors according to the time-activity diary to explore the effects of ambient O 3 on HRV indices. As the elderly subjects spent only 10% of the HRV measurements outdoors, the mean±SD samples of outdoor 5-min Holter recordings were 60±30 after the exclusion of the noises.…”

Section: Hrv Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The exposure error may occur because of the great discrepancy between indoor and outdoor O 3 concentration and the variations of indoor O 3 concentration from room to room. Because O 3 is highly reactive in indoor environment, the concentration of indoor O 3 depends on a number of factors, including the air-exchange rates, outdoor ozone concentration, surface removal rates, and reactions with other chemicals in the air, which make the indoor ozone concentrations vary significantly from room to room, structure to structure (Weschler, 2000). It was also reported that indoor ozone levels ranged from 10% to 80% of outdoor levels under the condition without the indoor emissions (Hayes, 1991).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Acute effect of ambient ozone on heart rate variability in healthy elderly subjects

Jia

Song

Shima

et al. 2011

Acute ambient ozone (O 3 ) exposure is associated with the increased mortality and morbidity of cardiovascular diseases. The dysfunction of cardiac autonomic nervous system (ANS), indicated by the disturbed heart rate variability (HRV), may be the most important underlying mechanism. Previous studies reported the heterogeneous associations between O 3 within several hours' exposure and HRV on general elderly subjects, in which poor surrogate of exposure evaluation and different health status of the subjects may be responsible for the heterogeneous associations. No studies were found focusing on the O 3 -mediated HRV effects within several minutes' exposure on healthy older subjects until recently. We measured the real-time 5-min ambient O 3 concentration and HRV frequency indices in 20 healthy elderly subjects in two surveys, with the 1st and 2nd survey in summer and winter, respectively. Mixed-linear model was used to evaluate the associations between the ambient 5-min average O 3 and concurrent 5-min HRV frequency indices measured during the outdoor period. After adjusting the co-pollutants (ambient PM 2.5 and nitrogen oxides concentrations) and subject characteristics, high frequency (HF) changed -4.87% (95% CI -8.62 to -0.97%) per 10 ppb increment of O 3 , whereas decreased low frequency (LF) and increased LFHFR were found to be marginally associated with the elevated O 3 (P values were 0.092 and 0.069). We concluded that the ambient O 3 exert transient decrease effects on HRV, which may induce acute cardiac events.

“…Some of the compounds of concern are ethanolamine, laural dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride, benzalkonium chloride, formaldehyde and other carbonyls, toluene, 4-nonylphenol, and glycol ethers such as 2-butoxy ethanol, 2-(2-ethoxyethoxy)ethanol, and 2-(2-butoxyethoxy)ethanol (reviewed in Nazaroff and Weschler, 2004). In addition, ambient ozone enters homes from the outdoors (Weschler et al, 1992;Reiss et al, 1995;Weschler, 2000) and reacts with unsaturated compounds in cleaning products forming secondary pollutants of concern (Weschler, 2006). There are a number of unsaturated terpenes found in cleaning products, such as a-pinine, used for its pine scent, and d-limonene, used for its lemon scent, as well as other terpene-related compounds, such as a-terpineol, linalool, and linalyl acetate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Passive sampling methods to determine household and personal care product use

Bennett

Teague

et al. 2011

Traditionally, use of household and personal care products has been collected through questionnaires, which is very time consuming, a burden on participants, and prone to recall bias. As part of the SUPERB Project (Study of Use of Products and Exposure-Related Behaviors), a novel platform was developed using bar codes to quickly and reliably determine what household and personal care products people have in their homes and determine the amount used over a 1-week period. We evaluated the acceptability and feasibility of our methodology in a longitudinal field study that included 47 California households, 30 with young children and 17 with an older adult. Acceptability was defined by refusal rates; feasibility was evaluated in terms of readable bar codes, useful product information in our database for all readable barcodes, and ability to find containers at both the start and end of the week. We found 63% of personal care products and 87% of the household care products had readable barcodes with 47% and 41% having sufficient data for product identification, respectively and secondly, the amount used could be determined most of the time. We present distributions for amount used by product category and compare inter-and intra-person variability. In summary, our method appears to be appropriate, acceptable, and useful for gathering information related to potential exposures stemming from the use of personal and household care products. A very low drop-out rate suggests that this methodology can be useful in longitudinal studies of exposure to household and personal care products.