Spatial and temporal variation of particulate matter characteristics within office buildings — The OFFICAIR study

Abstract

In the frame of the OFFICAIR project, office buildings were investigated across Europe to assess how the office workers are exposed to different particulate matter (PM) characteristics (i.e. PM mass concentration, particulate oxidative potential (OP) based on ascorbate and reduced glutathione depletion, trace element concentration and total particle number concentration (PNC)) within the buildings. Two offices per building were investigated during the working hours (5 consecutive days; 8h per day) in two campaigns. Differences were observed for all parameters across the office buildings. Our results indicate that the monitoring of the PM mass concentration in different offices within a building might not reflect the spatial variation of the health relevant PM characteristics such as particulate OP or the concentration of certain trace elements (e.g., Cu, Fe), since larger differences were apparent within a building for these parameters compared to that obtained for the PM mass concentration in many cases. The temporal variation was larger for almost all PM characteristics (except for the concentration of Mn) than the spatial differences within the office buildings. These findings indicate that repeated or long-term monitoring campaigns are necessary to have information about the temporal variation of the PM characteristics. However, spatial variation in exposure levels within an office building may cause substantial differences in total exposure in the long term. We did not find strong associations between the investigated indoor activities such as printing or windows opening and the PNC values. This might be caused by the large number of factors affecting PNC indoors and outdoors.

Seasonal Variations and Chemical Predictors of Oxidative Potential (OP) of Particulate Matter (PM), for Seven Urban French Sites

“…These results are also in agreement with the literature reported about the relation between the carbonaceous species and oxidative potential [7,34,75]. However, OP AA v usually shows lower correlations with OC than EC [20,29,30,76,77]. EC and OC show pro-inflammatory effects in toxicological studies [21,78,79], highlighting the importance of such OP predictors even if several toxicological studies suggest that these effects are probably rather due to reactive compounds (metals, quinones, etc.)…”

Indoor gaseous air pollutants determinants in office buildings—The OFFICAIR project

“…The research strategy consisted of three complementary phases: (a) “general survey” (167 buildings, winter of 2011‐2012), using questionnaires and checklists; (b) “detailed study” (37 buildings) with measurements carried out both in summer (2012) and winter (2012‐2013); and (c) “intervention study” (nine buildings) with more detailed measurements (eg, active sampling and online monitoring) carried out before and after an intervention related to the reduction in IAP. Further details on the project strategy and outcomes are reported in the project website (http://www.officair-project.eu) and in project‐related publications …”

“…Further details on the project strategy and outcomes are reported in the project website (www.offic air-proje ct.eu) and in project-related publications. 10,11,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]…”

Temporal changes in field calibration relationships for Aeroqual S500 O3 and NO2 sensor-based monitors

“…Our results also highlight the importance, when possible, of calibration of monitors in similar urban pollution environments to where they are to be used, as has been adopted in previous studies [9,10,16]. One recent study [20] used un-calibrated concentrations from the Aeroqual monitors to measure NO 2 and O 3 in indoor office environments with low O 3 concentrations which may have removed the need to adjust the Aeroqual NO 2 monitors for O 3 cross-sensitivity.…”