Spatial and seasonal variation of air quality in different microenvironments of a technical university in India

Sahu, Veerendra; Gurjar, Bhola R.

doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.107310

Cited by 23 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…As CO 2 , this also suggests considerable contribution from indoor emission sources and this agrees with previous studies (Kwon et al, 2015;Mečiarová et al, 2017). Such higher indoor than outdoor levels of CO 2 and TVOCs in the studied microenvironments imply inadequate ventilation (Stamatelopoulou et al, 2019;Sahu and Gurjar, 2020). For all investigated residences, average I/O ratios of the monitored pollutants were found relatively greater in the domestic kitchens than in the living rooms and bedrooms.…”

Section: Relationship Between Iaq and Outdoor Pollution Levelsupporting

confidence: 90%

Assessment of children’s exposure to air pollutants in urban residences during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abdel-Salam

2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Indoor air pollution has been associated with adverse health effects. Sensitive people such as children spend much time at home. It is therefore important to know whether our children breath clean air inside their residences or not. Monitoring of PM10, PM2.5, TVOCs, CO, and CO2 concentrations was conducted for 24 h in 36 urban residences in Alexandria—Egypt, simultaneously outdoors and indoors (living rooms, bedrooms, and kitchens), during the summer season. During the COVID-19 pandemic, children spend 98% of their time at home (49% in living rooms, 47% in bedrooms, and 2% in kitchens). Results indicated that children are particularly exposed to high concentrations of PM10 (85.4 ± 18.7 μg/m3) and PM2.5 (57.2 ± 16.4 μg/m3) exceeding the WHO guidelines, which can be dangerous for their health. Outdoor sources were found to be a main contributor to the indoor levels of PM10, PM2.5, and CO in bedrooms and living rooms of the surveyed residences. Therefore, effective control measures to reduce outdoor air pollution can result in improved indoor air quality (IAQ). Living rooms showed the highest impact on the daily average children exposure to PM2.5, PM10, TVOCs, and CO with average contributions of 59%, 56%, 57%, and 61%, respectively. For CO2, bedrooms showed the largest contribution to the children’s average exposure with an average value of 49%, pointing to inadequate ventilation and small size of this type of room. Indoor occupants’ activities were found to considerably affect IAQ in the bedrooms and living rooms. The study also highlighted the importance of other determinants, such as occupancy and air exchange rate, on IAQ in these two microenvironments. This research provides the first data on children’s exposure to indoor air pollutants in urban residences in Egypt.

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Section: Relationship Between Iaq and Outdoor Pollution Levelsupporting

confidence: 90%

Assessment of children’s exposure to air pollutants in urban residences during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abdel-Salam

2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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“…In this sense, Lab-ECO and Lab-CHE.4, with a high size/occupancy ratio (Table 1), had VR values above 5 L/s × person, higher than those obtained in the remaining labs (≤ 3.1 L/s × person). In general, the VRs obtained in this study were lower than those obtained in other university laboratories, where mechanical ventilation was used (10-65 L/s × person) (Sahu and Gurjar 2020), so the use of a small grille on the laboratory wall as a natural ventilation system was clearly insufficient. This poor ventilation system, with doors and windows closed, promoted low VRs in the laboratories when the occupancy was higher.…”

Section: Ventilation Ratescontrasting

confidence: 75%

“…The lowest values for CO 2 concentration were measured in Lab-ECO and Lab-CHE.4, which is in concordance with the largest size/occupancy ratio of these labs, 51 and 41 m 3 /person, respectively. Other works have also measured the CO 2 levels in different university laboratories (Valavanidis and Vatista 2006;Ugranli et al 2015;Hussin et al 2017;Telejko 2017;Kwong et al 2019;Sahu and Gurjar 2020;Idris et al 2020), finding that high occupancy and inadequate ventilation are the main reasons for an increase in CO 2 concentration during practical sessions.…”

Section: Indoor Environment Comfort Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indoor air quality analysis in naturally ventilated university training laboratories: a health risk assessment

Seseña

Rodrı́guez

Palop

2022

Air Qual Atmos Health

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The indoor air quality (IAQ) of eleven naturally ventilated training laboratories was analysed to evaluate the health risk to occupants. IAQ evaluation included analysis of physical (temperature (T) and relative humidity (RH)), chemical (CO2, CO, O3, total volatile organic compounds (TVOC), and particulate matter (PM)) and microbiological (fungi and bacteria) pollutants. Monitoring was carried out in labs used for teaching different academic disciplines (biology, chemical, ecology, and computers) during two periods of the academic year. Ventilation rates (VR), air change per hour (ACH) in every lab, and the hazard quotients for each of the chemical pollutants and the accumulated (HQ and HI) were calculated. Environmental comfort was not fully satisfactory considering the RH and CO2 values, especially during hours with higher occupancy. Coarse particles and bacteria were generated indoor related to human activity. At chemical and biological laboratories, TVOC concentrations were sometimes above the recommended value, and all the labs presented VR below the European guideline’s recommendations. Results from this study show natural ventilation is not enough to get an adequate IAQ, although no significant non-carcinogenic risk was estimated. However, installation of complementary ventilation systems would be advisable to avoid health risk by acute short-term exposure. Graphical abstract

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“…Here, we first model pre-COVID-19 lockdown (herewith referred as baseline exposure) and COVID-19 lockdown PM 2.5 exposures specific to each Indian state's urban/rural populations by gender and age. To estimate baseline exposures, we combined fine-scale PM 2.5 concentration estimates in various microenvironments (household [11], ambient [12], work/school [13][14][15], etc) with the most-detailed time-use survey data in India (n = 445 170), specific to each state's urban/rural populations by gender and age using a robust, Monte-Carlo exposure framework. Exposures during the COVID-19 lockdown were modeled using the same time-use survey and Monte-Carlo framework (where all time was spent in the household microenvironment) while considering an increase in home cooking activity for meals that previously were prepared and consumed outside of the house.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Here, we took the five-year average concentration between 2015 and 2019 as a baseline ambient PM 2.5 concentration (the five-year averaging time is consistent with other COVID-19-related air quality studies that assessed baseline, ambient concentrations [24][25][26]) for each state's urban and rural populations, where the urban/rural grid classification was adopted from Balk et al [27] (SI figure 1 for map of urban/rural grids). The final microenvironment that was characterized was the work/school environment, where PM 2.5 concentrations were estimated using annualaverage work/school to ambient PM 2.5 concentration correction factors from previous microenvironment exposure studies specific to India [13][14][15].…”

Section: Estimating Baseline Pm 25 Exposures For Each Indian State's ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

PM_2.5 exposures increased for the majority of Indians and a third of the global population during COVID-19 lockdowns: a residential biomass burning and environmental justice perspective

Nagpure¹,

Lal

2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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In response to the emergence of COVID-19 during Spring 2020, many countries implemented nationwide lockdowns and mandatory stay-at-home orders, which resulted in historically clean ambient air quality. However, in many parts of the world, biomass burning for cooking is a common activity, and in India specifically, it has been implicated as the leading contributor to indoor and ambient PM2.5, and its activity was not stopped and likely increased during lockdowns. Here, we first estimate baseline and lockdown PM2.5 exposures specific to India using new, nationwide time-use survey data coupled with fine-scale PM2.5 estimates within various microenvironments. We then extend this framework to estimate the population globally that will have experienced higher PM2.5 exposures during lockdowns, due both to an increase in residential biomass burning activity as well as the entire day being spent in the usually more-polluted home environment. 65% of Indians, the percent that uses biomass fuels for cooking, were exposed to higher PM2.5 levels during the lockdown compared to their modeled baseline exposures, with the average modeled exposure increasing by 13% (95% distribution: 8-26) (from 116 (82-157) to 131 (104-170) µg m-3). We further leverage this exposure framework to present India’s most comprehensive, to date, PM2.5 exposure disparity and environmental justice assessment; although women were still exposed to the highest levels of PM2.5 during the lockdown (from 135 (91-191) µg m-3 baseline to 147 (106-200) µg m-3 during the lockdown; 8.8% (5-18) increase), the demographic groups that experienced the highest exposure increases were working-age men and school-age children, whose average modeled exposures increased by 24% (18-48) (from 88 (63-118) to 108 (94-139) µg m-3) and 18% (8-31) (from 98 (75-134) to 115 (98-145) µg m-3), respectively. Globally, we conservatively estimate that 34.5% (21-51) of the global population observed increased PM2.5 exposures during COVID-19 lockdowns, concentrated in regions with high biomass usage. There have been a number of clean-cooking initiatives introduced in India and throughout the world to replace biomass cookstoves, but the finding that PM2.5 exposures increased for the majority of Indians and a third of the global population– driven largely by residential biomass burning for cooking – during a period of historically clean ambient air quality, re-emphasizes the urgent need to further address clean cooking interventions to reduce PM2.5 exposures and in turn improve health outcomes.

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Spatial and seasonal variation of air quality in different microenvironments of a technical university in India

Cited by 23 publications

References 61 publications

Assessment of children’s exposure to air pollutants in urban residences during the COVID-19 pandemic

Assessment of children’s exposure to air pollutants in urban residences during the COVID-19 pandemic

Indoor air quality analysis in naturally ventilated university training laboratories: a health risk assessment

PM_2.5 exposures increased for the majority of Indians and a third of the global population during COVID-19 lockdowns: a residential biomass burning and environmental justice perspective

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Spatial and seasonal variation of air quality in different microenvironments of a technical university in India

Cited by 23 publications

References 61 publications

Assessment of children’s exposure to air pollutants in urban residences during the COVID-19 pandemic

Assessment of children’s exposure to air pollutants in urban residences during the COVID-19 pandemic

Indoor air quality analysis in naturally ventilated university training laboratories: a health risk assessment

PM2.5 exposures increased for the majority of Indians and a third of the global population during COVID-19 lockdowns: a residential biomass burning and environmental justice perspective

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Product

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PM_2.5 exposures increased for the majority of Indians and a third of the global population during COVID-19 lockdowns: a residential biomass burning and environmental justice perspective