Particulate matter concentration and health risk assessment for a residential building during COVID-19 pandemic in Abha, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Building and its environment are in focus owing to health impact attributed to indoor air quality. This study was carried out to assess indoor air quality in terms of particulate matter (PM) and carbon dioxide in a residential building, during COVD-19 pandemic lockdown from March 25 to April 23, 2020, Abha, Saudi Arabia. The PM concentration range for kitchen, bedroom, and hall were 40,000–81000 μg/m 3 (PM 0.3 ), 15,000–26000 μg/m 3 (PM 0.5 ), 4000–6000 μg/m 3 (PM 1 ), 1100–1500 μg/m 3 (PM 2.5 ), 160–247 μg/m 3 (PM 5 ), and 60–95 μg/m 3 (PM 10 ). The results of this study suggest that bedroom needs to be ventilated as CO 2 concentration was reaching 700 ppm during sleep hours. PM concentration was exceeding 300 μg/m 3 (unhealthy) for all particle sizes of PM 0.3 , PM 0.5 , PM 1 , and PM 2.5 except for PM 10 which was also above safe limits (0–50 μg/m 3 ). Also, with influential habit (aromatic smoke), these concentrations increased 2–28 times for PM. The hazard quotient value greater than 1 revealed potential health risk to the inhabitants. Hence, future studies are needed for developing indoor air quality guidelines for residential buildings in Saudi Arabia and better planning and management of energy consumption.

Energy consumption, thermal comfort, and indoor air quality in mosques: Impact of Covid-19 measures

“…Compared to Cases 1 to 3, Case 4 had a shorter worship time by ∼25 min. Since human respiration was the primary source of CO 2 in the indoor environment( Algarni et al, 2021 ), occupancy, natural ventilation, and a two-fold reduction in the worship time compared to the period before the pandemic directly affected the CO 2 levels in the mosque. This illustrates the positive effect of pandemic measures on IAQ.…”

Effect of Meteorological Parameters and Air Pollutants Association with Health Risk Assessment during the Pandemic in Delhi, India

“…The hazard quotient (HQ) de nes the ratio of the exposure concentration for the speci c VOC species to an acute reference concentration (RfC) of non-carcinogenic compounds. For particulate pollutants, an HQ value of less than 1 indicates a minor or insigni cant non-carcinogenic effect, whereas higher values indicate greater non-carcinogenic risks resulting in a signi cant adverse effect on human health [Algarni et al, 2021, Edlund et al, 2021. The calculated HQ for PM 2.5 was found to be less than 1 (HQ < 1) for adults, whereas for children and infants was more than 1 (HQ > 1) for pre, during, and postpandemic periods (Fig) . The results for HQ values for PM 2.5 indicated that children and infants were more likely to experience health effects after adults.…”

“…Fine particulate matter (PM) pollutants are known to cause serious health issues like asthma, cardiovascular mortality, pneumonia, bronchitis, allergies, adverse neurological conditions, cancer, reproductive defects, and even death but the most susceptible population, which includes those with heart and lung conditions, the elderly, children, and pregnant women, are severely impacted with high PM levels [Opara et al, 2021;Singh et al, 2014]. According to Algarni et al, (2021) the smaller the particle size, the more implications it will cause on the metabolism in human body [Algarni et al, 2021]. The primary contributor of the observed positive relative risk for cardiopulmonary and lung cancer disease is due to its ability to cause in ammation and oxidative stress [Bodor et al, 2022] PM can accomplish the most thorough opening in the lungs [Nagar et al, 2014], which can lead to repetitive respiratory hypersensitivity.…”

A systematic literature review on indoor PM2.5 concentrations and personal exposure in urban residential buildings

“…Investigation methods of individual activity pattern and behavior are given in Table 2 , including sampling or measurement, time-microenvironment-activity diary (TMAD), questionnaire and video record. Measurements were widely conducted in Africa ( Abdel-Salam, 2013 , 2015 , 2021a ), North America ( Miller et al., 2009 ; Colton et al., 2014 ; Wang et al., 2016a ; Singer et al., 2017 ; Singleton et al., 2017 ; Jeong et al., 2019 ), Europe ( Derbez et al., 2014 , 2018 ; Meier et al., 2015 ; Wyss et al., 2016 ; Salis et al., 2017 ; Ścibor et al., 2019 ) and Asia ( Li and Chen, 2003 ; Cao et al., 2005 ; Massey et al., 2009 , 2012 ; Yassin et al., 2012 ; Gurley et al., 2013 ; Sidra et al., 2015 ; Fan et al., 2016 , 2018 ; Han et al., 2016 ; Wang et al., 2016b , 2018 ; Zhou et al., 2016 ; Shao et al., 2017 ; Weaver et al., 2017 ; Huang et al., 2018 , 2019 ; Liu et al., 2018 , 2020 ; Tang and Wang, 2018 ; Tong et al., 2018 ; Lawrence et al., 2019 ; Liu et al., 2020 ; Xue et al., 2020 ; Algari et al., 2021 ; Shen et al., 2021 ; Tran et al., 2021 ). However, direct measurements of personal exposure is hard to conducted, because it is expensive, labor intensive, invasive, and applicable only to samples ( Dimitroulopoulou et al., 2001a , Dimitroulopoulou et al., 2001b ; Kruize et al., 2003 ; McGrath et al., 2014a , McGrath et al., 2014b ).…”