Innovative tools and modeling methodology for impact prediction and assessment of the contribution of materials on indoor air quality

Background: The combination of more and more airtight buildings and the emission of formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by building, decoration and furniture materials lead to lower indoor air quality. Hence, it is an important challenge for public health but also for the preservation of cultural heritage, as for example, artworks in museum showcases and other cultural objects. Indeed, some VOCs such as organic acids or carbonyl compounds may play a role in the degradation of some metallic objects or historic papers. Thus, simple and cost effective sampling tools are required to meet the recent and growing demand of on-site diagnostic of indoor air quality, including emission source identification and their ranking. Results: In this aim, we developed new tools based on passive sampling (Solid-Phase Micro Extraction, SPME) to measure carbonyls compounds (including formaldehyde) and other VOCs and both in indoor air and at the material/ air interface. On one hand, the coupling of SPME with a specially designed emission cell allows the screening and the quantification of the VOCs emitted by building, decoration or furniture materials. On the other hand, indoor air is simply analysed using new vacuum vial sampling combined with VOCs pre-concentration by SPME. These alternative sampling methods are energy free, compact, silent and easy to implement for on-site measurements. They show satisfactory analytical performance as detection limits range from 0.05 to 0.1 μg m−3 with an average Relative Standard Deviation (RSD) of 18 %. They already have been applied to monitoring of indoor air quality and building material emissions for a 6 months period. The data obtained were in agreement with the prediction of a physical monozonal model which considers building materials both as VOC sources and sinks and air exchange rate in one single room (“box model”). Conclusion: Results are promising, even if more data are required to complete validation, and the model could be envisaged as a predictive tool for indoor air quality. This new integrated approach involving measurements and modeling could be easily transposed to historic environments and to the preservation of cultural heritage.