Are children safe indoor from outdoor air pollution? A short review
نویسندگان
چکیده
Background: Air pollution is a serious threat to children health. Given that children spend over 80% of their time indoors, understanding transport of pollutants from outdoor to indoor environments is important for assessing the impact of exposure to outdoor pollution on children health. The most common advice given during a smoke pollution episode is to stay indoors. How well this works depends on how clean the indoor air is and how pollutants from outdoor air contribute to pollutants load in indoor air. Objective: To assess the amount of outdoor air pollution coming indoors threatening children health. Methods: A Medline/EMBASE search of scientific articles was performed to evaluate the indoor-tooutdoor (I/O) concentration ratios of two main pollutants: ultrafine particles (UFP) and ozone (O3). Result: Under infiltration condition, the highest I/O ratios (0.6 0.9) were usually observed for larger UFP (70 100 nm), while the lowest I/O ratios (0.1 0.4) occurred typically around 10 20 nm. O3 I/O ratios vary according to air exchange and may be 0.6 0.8 for interiors having a large volume exchange with outdoor air (i.e. open windows) and 0.3 0.4 with conventional air conditioning systems. Conclusions: In the absence of indoor sources or activities, indoor UFP particles originate from outdoors. O3 concentration indoors may reach concentration similar to outdoors. Environmental and energy policies must also explicitly account for all the impacts of fossil fuel combustion on child health and development.
منابع مشابه
Indoor air quality monitoring in urban areas using Smart Sensing Technology
Recently, indoor air quality has attracted the attention of policymakers and researchers as a critical issue like that of external air pollution. Indoor air quality is more important as people spend time longer indoors than outdoors. Indoor environments are closed compared to external environments providing less opportunity for the pollutants to dilute. The emissions contain many substances tha...
متن کاملAir pollution exposures and children's health.
The evidence from a large number of studies indicates that exposures to current outdoor air pollution increase respiratory morbidity in children. Children with asthma, and those with asthma-like symptoms but without a diagnosis of asthma, are considered to be at highest risk of experiencing short-term and/or longer-term adverse health effects. Many outdoor air pollutants readily penetrate indoo...
متن کاملExposure to indoor and outdoor air pollution among children under five years old in urban area
Indoor air pollution associated with cooking and heating biomass fuel burning is estimated to be responsible for 7 million deaths in 2016 and most of these deaths occur in low and middle income countries. In Côte d'Ivoire, 73% of the population is reported using biomass (charcoal or wood) for cooking. The active device 3M EVM-7 was used to measure PM2.5 daily average concentrations i...
متن کاملOutdoor-indoor air pollution in urban environment: challenges and opportunity
*Correspondence: Dennis Y. C. Leung, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] With the continual improvement in our quality of life, indoor air quality has become an important area of concern in the twenty-first century. Indoor air quality is affected by many factors including the type and running conditions of indoor polluti...
متن کاملIndoor Air Pollutants: Relevant Aspects and Health Impacts
During the last three decades, many efforts have been made to protect populations from harmful exposure to outdoor pollutants. Networks of air monitoring stations have been located in strategic places and these provide information on the outdoor pollutant concentrations to which populations are exposed. However, people spend about 80-90% of their time in various indoor ambiences (i.e. homes, of...
متن کامل