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Title: Estimating the effect of being indoors on total personal exposure to outdoor air pollution

Journal Article · · Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association; (USA)
 [1]
  1. Systems Applications, Inc., San Rafael, CA (USA)

A personal air quality model (PAQM) has been developed to estimate the effect of being indoors on total personal exposure to outdoor-generated air pollution. Designed to improve air toxics risk assessment, PAQM accounts for individual hourly activity patterns, indoor-outdoor differences, physical exercise level, and geographic location for up to 56 different population groups. Unique hourly activity profiles are specified for each population group; group members are assigned each hour to one of up to 10 different indoor and outdoor microenvironments. To illustrate PAQM use, we apply it to two example cases: a long-term example representative of situations where pollutant health impact is related to integrated exposure (as in the case of potentially carcinogenic air toxics) and a short-term example representative of situations where health impact is related to acute exposure to peak concentrations (as with ozone). Case study results illustrate that personal exposure, and thus health risk, attributable to outdoor-generated air pollution mobility. Where health impact is related to long-term integrated exposure, exposure and subsequent risk are likely to be lower than that estimated by previous modeling techniques which do not account for such effects.

OSTI ID:
6799692
Journal Information:
Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association; (USA), Vol. 39:11; ISSN 1047-3289
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English