Examining the feasibility of prediction models by monitoring data and management data for bioaerosols inside office buildings

Assessment of Indoor Bioaerosols in Public Spaces by Real-Time Measured Airborne Particles

“…The indoor and outdoor bioaerosol concentrations and particle concentrations measured in public spaces are shown in Fig air exchange rate was low, leading to the accumulation of CO 2 generated from the metabolism of people indoors (Tseng et al, 2011). Hence, CO 2 concentrations were significantly higher indoors (853 ± 393 ppm) than outdoors (492 ± 128 ppm) (Mann-Whitney U test, p = 0.000), with an I/O ratio of 1.84 ± 0.83.…”

“…Bioaerosols are suspended biological particles consisting of microorganisms or organism-derived materials (Douwes et al, 2003;Brandl et al, 2008). Indoor airborne biological pollutants have numerous sources, including outdoor air, human bodies, wallpaper, carpet, resuspended particles, air conditioning systems, and animal waste (Lindemann et al, 1982;Pastuszka et al, 2000;Chao et al, 2002;Hargreaves et al, 2003;Kalogerakis et al, 2005;Tseng et al, 2011;Hospodsky et al, 2012;Xu et al, 2017). Exposure to indoor bioaerosols, such as bacteria, molds, viruses, pollen, pet allergens, mycotoxins, and bacterial endotoxins, may cause health effects, such as SBS, allergies, asthma, poisoning, infection, and even cancer (Douwes et al, 2003;Schleibinger et al, 2004;Bowers et al, 2011).…”

“…However, the subsequent conventional microbiological cultivation takes 3-5 days to obtain biological pollutant concentrations at the sampling site, which may delay the response to poor IAQ. Although conventional microbiological culture methods are unable to measure the concentration of biological pollutants in real time, there have been numerous studies investigating the correlation of indoor bioaerosols with indoor and outdoor air and environmental parameters, such as ventilation, house age, number of indoor personnel, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, CO 2 , and sizesegregated particle number concentrations (total, ultrafine, and submicron particle number concentrations), and particle mass concentrations (PM 2.5 and PM 10 ) (Goh et al, 2000;Luoma and Batterman, 2001;Hargreaves et al, 2003;Zhu et al, 2003;Agranovski et al, 2004;Bartlett et al, 2004;Tseng et al, 2011;Raval et al, 2012;McDonagh et al, 2014).…”

“…In addition, some studies have established linear or nonlinear statistical correlations between bioaerosol concentrations and different variables to predict the concentration of indoor airborne biological pollutants such as correlations between bacterial bioaerosols and particle number concentration in different indoor environments (Parat et al, 1999;Mirhoseini et al, 2016), fungal concentration and relative humidity in office buildings (Law et al, 2001), fungal bioaerosols and building age, ambient temperature, relative humidity, CO 2 , and ventilation in primary schools (Bartlett et al, 2004), bacterial bioaerosols and particle size range in cabins with a controllable environment (Tham and Zuraimi, 2005), bacterial bioaerosols with temperature and relative humidity in air-conditioned offices (Mui et al, 2008), and bacterial and fungal bioaerosols in office buildings with building monitoring and management data (Tseng et al, 2011). These studies investigated one or more independent variables, and were confined to the same indoor space or type of space.…”

“…Hence, many buildings may breed high concentrations of bioaerosols, and indoor air pollution has thus become an important issue in Taiwan. Currently, Tseng et al (2011) is the only research group in Taiwan that has constructed mathematical bioaerosol models to predict indoor bacterial and fungal bioaerosol concentrations in single and multiple office buildings in the metropolitan areas of Taipei. However, this study involved a large number of independent variables, including the number of floors, ventilation type, indoor personnel density, indoor and outdoor temperatures, relative humidity, and CO 2 , PM 10 , and PM 2.5 concentrations.…”