Volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds of respiratory health relevance in French dwellings

Abstract

Over the last decades, the prevalence of childhood respiratory conditions has dramatically increased worldwide. Considering the time spent in enclosed spaces, indoor air pollutants are of major interest to explain part of this increase. This study aimed to measure the concentrations of pollutants known or suspected to affect respiratory health that are present in dwellings in order to assess children's exposure. Measurements were taken in 150 homes with at least one child, in Brittany (western France), to assess the concentrations of 18 volatile organic compounds (among which four aldehydes and four trihalomethanes) and nine semi-volatile organic compounds (seven phthalates and two synthetic musks). In addition to descriptive statistics, a principal component analysis (PCA) was used to investigate grouping of contaminants. Formaldehyde was highly present and above 30 μg/m(3) in 40% of the homes. Diethyl phthalate, diisobutyl phthalate, and dimethylphthalate were quantified in all dwellings, as well as Galaxolide and Tonalide. For each chemical family, the groups appearing in the PCA could be interpreted in term of sources. The high prevalence and the levels of these compounds, with known or suspected respiratory toxicity, should question regulatory agencies to trigger prevention and mitigation actions.

Re-evaluation of the WHO (2010) formaldehyde indoor air quality guideline for cancer risk assessment

“…In a study in French dwellings, the range of FA concentrations varied from 18 to 26 µg/m 3 (Brown et al 2015). In another study in French dwellings, the mean, 90th percentile and the maximum concentration was 29, 46 and 113 µg/m 3 , respectively, in children’s bedrooms (Dallongeville et al 2015). Another study compared apartments in Finland and in Lithuania (Du et al 2015).…”

Concentration and determinants of molds and allergens in indoor air and house dust of French dwellings

“…These dwellings being part of a larger study where chemical contaminants were measured too, the selection of the dwellings was based on trihalomethanes concentrations in the water supply network, and was described elsewhere (Dallongeville et al, 2015). The dwellings were investigated between September 2012 and October 2013 with 2 visits each performed by trained inspectors.…”

Public perception of rural environmental quality: Moving towards a multi-pollutant approach

“…Components) that will further be used in a predictive modeling approach. This method has been previously applied to air pollution studies (Billionnet et al, 2012;Sacks et al, 2012;Dallongeville et al, 2016).…”

“…These daunting issues have been tackled by a number of statistical methods, such as Bayesian approaches (Park et al, 2014), shrinkage methods (e.g. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and least absolute selection operator (LASSO) regression) (Roberts and Martin, 2005;Dallongeville et al, 2016) and source-apportionment methods (e.g. extended chemical mass balance and positive matrix factorization) (Schreuder et al, 2006).…”

“…Previous studies following a multi-pollutant approach have focused on: 1) identifying pollutant profiles and possible clusters of exposure (Austin et al, 2012;Azuma et al, 2016;Dallongeville et al, 2016); and 2) estimating and understanding the adverse effects of multiple pollutants exposure (Billionnet et al, 2011;Coker et al, 2016). Combined exposures have been investigated for different sources and air pollution mixtures such as photochemical air pollutants (Saez et al, 2002), indoor VOCs (volatile organic compounds) (Dallongeville et al, 2016) and urban outdoor air pollutants (Austin et al, 2012;Zanobetti et al, 2014;Coker et al, 2016;Deng et al, 2016).…”