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Title: Indoor air quality in public buildings. Volume 1. Final report

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6582312

Indoor air quality was investigated in four buildings: a school, an office building, and two homes for the elderly. The main goals were to measure volatile organic compounds, inhalable particles, and air-exchange rates indoors and outdoors at each building; select one new building and make several monitoring visits over a six-month period to determine changes in indoor air quality as the building aged; and measure emission rates from building materials and cleaning operations in the new building. All buildings had higher levels of VOCs indoors than outdoors, with the new building having an indoor-outdoor ratio for all VOCs of about 50 (declining after two months to about 10, and after 5 months to about 5). Smoking lounges and apartments in the homes for the elderly had 24-hour average fine-particle concentrations of up to 100 micrograms/cu m compared to typical levels of about 10 micrograms/cu m. Cleaning operations emitted large quantities of halogenated VOCs, whereas paints, carpets, and adhesives emitted smaller quantities of aromatic and aliphatic compounds.

Research Organization:
Research Triangle Inst., Research Triangle Park, NC (USA)
OSTI ID:
6582312
Report Number(s):
PB-89-102503/XAB
Resource Relation:
Other Information: See also Volume 2, PB--89-102511. Portions of this document are not fully legible
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English