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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Ensuring good air quality is essential for safeguarding human health, requiring monitoring to comprehend air composition and formulate effective interventions. This study focused on indoor and outdoor air quality monitoring within a home improvement and gardening franchise store in northeastern Portugal. Real-time optical monitors recorded levels of particulate matter below 10 µm (PM10), while PM10 gravimetric sampling was performed to analyse carbonaceous constituents and metal(loid)s. Continuous monitoring also included CO2 and comfort parameters. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), bacteria, and fungi were passively sampled. During labour hours, indoor PM10 concentrations exceeded the national protection threshold, reaching 45.4 ± 15.2 μg/m3, compared to 27.1 ± 9.96 μg/m3 outdoors. The presence of elements from tyre and brake wear and road dust resuspension suggested that outdoor particles were mainly from non-exhaust traffic emissions. Indoors, the abundance of soil-related elements points to the resuspension of mineral dust as an important source of PM10. Also, anthropogenic constituents associated with activities (e.g., wood sawing) and products sold in the store contributed to indoor particle levels. Dominant indoor VOCs were α-pinene, limonene, and hexanal. The most abundant elements in PM10 indoors were Ca, Fe and Zn, with values of 658 ± 297, 273 ± 141, 172 ± 67.4 ng/m3, respectively. Common fungi included Trichoderma sp. and Penicillium sp., while colony-forming bacterial units were most prevalent in the gardening and heating sections. This comprehensive study highlights the need to implement indoor air quality monitoring strategies in commercial spaces, particularly with regard to particulate matter and associated pollutants.
Description
The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support by national funds FCT/MCTES to CESAM (UIDP/50017/2020, UIDB/50017/2020 and LAP/0094/2020), to SusTEC
(LA/P/0007/2020), to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020), to CeDRI (UIDB/05757/2020 and UIDP/05757/2020), and also financial support to PhD fellow students Leonardo Furst (SFRH/BD/08461/2020) and Yago Cipoli (SFRH/BD/04992/2021). The authors would like to express their gratitude towards Bianca Gomes, Renata Cervantes, and Pedro Pena from the Health & Technology Research Center (H&TRC - ESTeSL) for their valuable
contributions to the microorganism analysis in this work.
Keywords
Air quality Indoor air Retail store IAQ PM10 Volatile organic compounds VOCs Bioburden
Citation
Furst L, Cipoli Y, Yubero E, Galindo N, Viegas C, Dias M, et al. Indoor air quality in a home improvement store: gaseous pollutants, bioburden and particle-bound chemical constituents. SSRN [preprint server]. 2024 August 9.