Indoor air and human exposure assessment--needs and approaches

Abstract

The Commission launched on June 9, 2004 the Environment and Health Action Plan to reduce diseases caused by a polluted environment. The plan would develop an EU system integrating information on the state of the environment, the ecosystem and human health. The action plan identifies 13 actions (including an action on indoor air quality), which refer to initiatives on how to better understand the environment-health link and establish how environmental exposure leads to epidemiological effects. The ultimate goal of the proposed "Environment and Health Strategy" is to develop an environment and health "cause-effect framework" that will provide the necessary information for the development of Community policy dealing with sources and the impact pathway of health stressors. The need for policy-science interface in the EU guided in the last few years the research on indoor air pollution. In particular, the lack of information regarding human exposure to air pollutants makes it necessary, in line with the Environment and Health Action Plan, to develop targeted strategies to evaluate the impact of indoor air pollution on human health. This includes apart from specific measurements in selected confined spaces (homes, schools, public buildings, etc.), large-scale monitoring campaigns at European level, specifically designed to assess indoor and outdoor air quality and personal exposure to pollutants in combination with micro-environmental activity patterns. Information from these studies will be considered as crucial for a first evaluation of the overall situation in indoor environments and the possible sources and source strengths of pollutants to which humans are exposed during working, commuting and rest time. As a first approach to systematically evaluate the relationship between indoor air pollution and human (chronic) exposure to pollutants, we started at the end of 2003 with the AIRMEX project (Indoor Air Monitoring and Exposure Assessment Study). In the frame of AIRMEX, measuring campaigns in various cities in Southern and Central Europe were carried out to estimate indoor/outdoor relationships and personal exposure concentrations for selected volatile organic compounds (aromatics, carbonyls, terpenoids). In agreement with the overall scope of the project, the measuring objects included public buildings (town halls, guild halls), schools and kindergartens. Personal exposure measurements were conducted with employers and/or teachers working in the selected occupational environments. Preliminary results indicate that personal exposure concentrations are higher than the indoor/outdoor concentrations. In most cases they are twice as high (or even higher) as indoor concentrations and significantly higher than outdoor concentrations.