SummaryAirborne pollen allergens—a relevant component of bioaerosols and, therefore, of airborne particulate matter—are considered an important metric in air quality assessments. Although the measurement of airborne pollen allergen concentrations in outdoor environments (namely, in urban areas) has been recognized as a key environmental health indicator, no such obligation exists for indoor environments (dwellings or occupational settings). However, people spend most of their daily time (80–90%) indoors, where the majority of their exposure to air pollution, including pollen allergens, occurs. Nonetheless, the relative importance of airborne pollen allergen exposure indoors differs from outdoors because of differences in pollen loads, sources, dispersion, and degree of penetration from the outdoor surroundings, as well as the differences in the allergenic pollen profiles. In this brief review, we mined the literature over the last 10 years to summarize what existing measurements reveal about the relevance of airborne allergenic pollen in indoor environments. The research priorities on this topic are presented, highlighting the challenges and the motivations for obtaining pollen data in built environments which are key to understand the extent and mechanisms of human exposure to airborne pollen allergens. Thus, we provide a comprehensive assessment of the relevance of airborne allergenic pollen in indoor environments, highlighting knowledge gaps and research needs related to their health effects.
Direct air capturing (DAC) is an energy demanding process for CO2-removal from air. Ongoing research focuses on the potential of indoor air as DAC-feed to profit from currently unused energetic synergies between DAC and the built environment. In this work, we investigated the performance of three different readily available, solid DAC-adsorbers under typical indoor environmental conditions of 16-25°C, 25-60% relative humidity (RH), and CO2-concentrations of less than 800 ppm above atmospheric concentrations. The measured mass-specific CO2-adsorption capacities of K2CO3-impregnated activated carbon, polyethylenimine-snow (PEI-snow), and polyethylenimine (PEI) on silica amount to 6.5 ± 0.3 mg g − 1 , 52.9 ± 4.9 mg g − 1 , and 56.9 ± 4.2 mg g − 1 , respectively. Among the three investigated adsorber materials, PEI on silica is the most promising candidate for DAC-applications as its synthesis is rather simple, the CO2-desorption is feasible at moderate conditions of about 80°C at 100 mbar, and the competing co-adsorption of water does not strongly affect the CO2-adsorption under the investigated experimental conditions.
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