A study of airbourne particulate matter concentrations in classrooms

Abstract

Human exposure to airborne particulate matter (PM) has drawn considerable attention in the mid-1990s, this is because of the harmful effects that particulates have on the human respiratory and cardiovascular system. People spend most of their time in various indoor environments, thus considerations have been given by various researchers to the air quality in these environments (e.g. residential houses, offices, etc.). The quality of air in classrooms is also very important due to the fact that teachers and students spend considerable periods of time within them. However, investigations into PM in such premises are few. To-date studies investigating particulate concentrations in classrooms have generally focused on primary and secondary schools and little attempts have been made for studying university classroom environments. There are a number of factors that could affect particle concentration in classrooms such as indoor and outdoor meteorological parameters, air change rates, and human-related activity. However, these factors have not been fully investigated, and the published literature in the field shows that there is a lack of understanding of PM behaviour in classrooms. Due to the varying occupancy density in university classrooms as compared to children classrooms and the recommendations reported from previous studies, this study was conducted to investigate airborne particle concentrations for different particle sizes (PM!, PM2.5, PMIO, and other narrow particle size ranges) in university classrooms. The aim of this study was to identify the important factors that could influence the concentration of these types of particles in such classrooms, and then to develop a model for predicting the exposure levels of such particulate matter in such rooms. The results show that university classrooms are subjected to high particle concentrations, particularly when they are occupied. The results obtained from the classroom tests also show that the periods during which students enter and/or leave the classrooms give rise to high concentrations of airborne particulate matter in these rooms. Additional experiments were conducted in an environmental test chamber to provide further information and support to the results obtained in the classrooms, and also to identify the primary parameters that might influence the concentration levels during human walking in a room.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo