| Title: | Emission Rates of Volatile Organic Compounds from Humans |
| Author(s): | Wang N; Ernle L; Beko G; Wargocki P; Williams J; |
| Address: | "Atmospheric Chemistry Department, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Hahn-Meitner-Weg 1, 55128 Mainz, Germany. International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy, Department of Environmental and Resource Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Nils Koppels Alle 402, 2800 Lyngby, Denmark. Climate & Atmosphere Research Centre, The Cyprus Institute, 1645 Nicosia, Cyprus" |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1520-5851 (Electronic) 0013-936X (Print) 0013-936X (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Human-emitted volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are mainly from breath and the skin. In this study, we continuously measured VOCs in a stainless-steel environmentally controlled climate chamber (22.5 m(3), air change rate at 3.2 h(-1)) occupied by four seated human volunteers using proton transfer reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometry and gas chromatography mass spectrometry. Experiments with human whole body, breath-only, and dermal-only emissions were performed under ozone-free and ozone-present conditions. In addition, the effect of temperature, relative humidity, clothing type, and age was investigated for whole-body emissions. Without ozone, the whole-body total emission rate (ER) was 2180 +/- 620 mug h(-1) per person (p(-1)), dominated by exhaled chemicals. The ERs of oxygenated VOCs were positively correlated with the enthalpy of the air. Under ozone-present conditions ( approximately 37 ppb), the whole-body total ER doubled, with the increase mainly driven by VOCs resulting from skin surface lipids/ozone reactions, which increased with relative humidity. Long clothing (more covered skin) was found to reduce the total ERs but enhanced certain chemicals related to the clothing. The ERs of VOCs derived from this study provide a valuable data set of human emissions under various conditions and can be used in models to better predict indoor air quality, especially for highly occupied environments" |
| Keywords: | "*Air Pollutants/analysis *Air Pollution, Indoor/analysis Environmental Monitoring Humans *Ozone/chemistry *Volatile Organic Compounds breath clothing ozone relative humidity skin temperature;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineWang, Nijing Ernle, Lisa Beko, Gabriel Wargocki, Pawel Williams, Jonathan eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't 2022/04/08 Environ Sci Technol. 2022 Apr 19; 56(8):4838-4848. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.1c08764. Epub 2022 Apr 7" |
