Indoor environmental quality classification of school environments bymonitoring PM and CO2 concentration levels

Özet

Nowadays the control of indoor healthiness and comfort has become a key issue in school environments. Indoorenvironment quality (IEQ) as regards indoor air quality (IAQ), ventilation requirement as well as health effectsassessed by Hazard Index and Cancer Risk were investigated in a naturally ventilated school by monitoringindoor/outdoor CO2concentrations and particulate matter (PM) levels. This way, a CO2fluxes balance permittedto calculate actual ventilation rates used to classify the classrooms on the basis of the proposal contained in fpEN16,798 standard. The relationship between ventilation, CO2levels and PM was also studied. In absence of ap-preciable internal pollution sources, the indoor concentrations of chemical pollutants were correlated to thecorresponding outdoor concentrations by the comparison of indoor/outdoor PM whose differences in this casedepend only by indoor deposit and resuspension. Heavy metals (As, Cd, Ni, Pb) and PAHs were considered asrequired by CEN recommendations. A simple procedure was carried on to assess the potential health hazards ofpollutants on students. Hazard Index and the total Cancer Risk of the inhalation exposure were evaluated asproposed by United States Environmental Protection Agency. The calculated values resulted normally acceptableif related to daily school period, but not completely satisfactory because they highlighted that the indoor con-taminant concentrations were not acceptable for 24 h exposure. Therefore these chemical pollutants reduce theno health hazard exposure capacity of the children in the remaining part of the day.