Title
Spatial and temporal variation of particulate matter characteristics within office buildings — The OFFICAIR study
Author
Szigeti, T.
Dunster, C.
Cattaneo, A.
Spinazzè, A.
Mandin, C.
Le Ponner, E.
de Oliveira Fernandes, E.
Ventura, G.
Saraga, D.E.
Sakellaris, I.A.
de Kluizenaar, Y.
Cornelissen, E.
Bartzis, J.G.
Kelly, F.J.
Publication year
2017
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. PM2.5 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; 8 h per day) in two campaigns. Differences were observed for all parameters across the office buildings. Our results indicate that the monitoring of the PM2.5 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 PM2.5 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. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.
Subject
Urban Mobility & Environment Fluid & Solid Mechanics
SUMS - Sustainable Urban Mobility and Safety HTFD - Heat Transfer & Fluid Dynamics
ELSS - Earth, Life and Social Sciences TS - Technical Sciences
Buildings and Infrastructures
Ergonomics
2015 Urbanisation
Environmental health
Office building
Oxidative potential
Particle number concentration
PM2.5
Spatial variation
To reference this document use:
http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:26d3adbc-a071-49c5-bcbc-a322944595f5
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.01.013
TNO identifier
753470
Publisher
Elsevier B.V.
ISSN
0048-9697
Source
Science of the Total Environment, 587-588, 59-67
Document type
article