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Even your own home is not immune to air pollution. A group of researchers from Colorado conducted one of the world's first large-scale researches on the chemistry of indoor environments and found that even the most basic housework can increase pollution levels far more than ever before. we did not think so before.
Led by Marina Vance, an badistant professor of engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder, a group of researchers cooked and cleaned in a three-bedroom manufactured home of the University of Austin, at Texas. These prefab homes are built as dwelling houses, but are also equipped with extremely sensitive sensors and instruments allowing researchers to measure the environment in the interior. During the experiment, the researchers prepared various meals, from toast to Thanksgiving dinner, and cleaned the rooms of the house with various products.
"Houses have never been considered a major source of outdoor air pollution and the time has come to start exploring it," Vance said. "We wanted to know – how do basic activities such as cooking and cleaning alter the chemistry of a home?"
They found extremely high levels of PM2.5 particles – fine particles measuring 2.5 microns and too small to be filtered through the nose – in the air after cooking, up to 200 micrograms per cubic meter. To put this in context, central London air has a PM2.5 particle concentration of 15 micrograms per cubic meter, which is already considered harmful by many standards.
The levels of fine particles and pollutants from gas, soot and vegetable oils increased after cooking a meal with the help of a gas stove and combined to create the PM2.5 particles, which have also been found to exacerbate respiratory diseases. Scientists have discovered that the substances left in the ovens or even in the pans during cooking could also have effects on the chemistry of the indoor air.
"When something is rejected directly by a food, or by the exhaust gases of a car or something else, we call these primary pollutants because they come directly from the source," says Julia Fussell, member of the Science Policy and Epidemiology team of the King & # 39; s College's Environmental Research Group in London. "These pollutants can then participate in complex chemical reactions."
This area of research is relatively new. It is difficult to measure the chemistry of indoor environments because of the scale and complexity of the challenge. Each residential unit, whether it's a house, an apartment or a trailer, already contains a unique blend of various particles. These researchers also found that they could change according to individuals. present (fine particles can stick to people's clothes). So, extrapolating measurements of specific buildings will paint an unclear picture – especially in the event that a house in the countryside will have different pollutants than a high-rise building in town. Even in this case, this can be aggravated, for example, by different types of hobs or cleaning liquids used.
Researchers are particularly concerned about how volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can affect the environment of indoor air. These are often released not only from cooking or cleaning, but also from aerosols (eg, spray scents) and can be found in building materials that are common not only in homes, but in most buildings.
"One of the reasons why this is attracting more and more attention is that buildings have become more airtight, in order to reduce heat loss and improve the This means that they rely much more on the ventilation arrangement designed to achieve good levels of ventilation, "said Tim Sharpe, a professor at the Mackintosh Environmental Architecture Research Unit at the Glasgow School of Art. "At the same time, there are more and more sources of pollution in the home: chemicals from building materials, furniture and household items, cooking particles, laundry moisture and clothes drying."
The design of houses and building materials used can also have a significant effect on the amount of pollutants in a building – for example, ventilation in older buildings is significantly worse than in new buildings. But new buildings that focus on energy efficiency will be airtight, which can keep pollutants flowing and reduce their ability to react with other harmful substances.
"When chemical reactions occur in the interior, primary pollutants are converted to secondary pollutants, and some of them are volatile organic compounds," Fussell explains. "Much of the chemistry occurs between ozone and particles from the outside, so the things we cook and clean with, like a household chemical or aerosol."
Tom Woolly, professor of architecture at Anglia Ruskin University and author of Building materials, health and indoor air quality, states that one of the major problems in the UK is that there are minimum standards of indoor air quality for buildings. "There is a kind of limit for VOCs in building regulations, which is based on a standard invented many years ago, but I've talked to building control inspectors and no d & # 's 39, between them was aware that this was in the regulation of construction, "he said. said.
"Suppose you have decided to buy a new house, somewhere in residential counties, for example – and that this house will have been tested for its energy efficiency and airtightness, but that does not correspond absolutely not meet the required standards, because there are these toxic chemicals that have been emitted by the building materials. "
"In hermetically sealed buildings where the exchange rate is low, the risk of exposure to indoor contaminants is significantly higher," says Grainne McGill, also a member of the Mackintosh Environmental Architecture Research Unit. "Architects can reduce the risk of poor indoor air quality by specifying non-toxic construction materials and low-emission finishes."
But even if the new apartments are built with airtightness as the main objective, this does not solve the potentially harmful chemicals emitted by all types of building materials – such as insulation and coatings that are supposed to contain flame retardants. However, as interest in the area increases and more and more people become aware of the problem, architects and manufacturers are implementing new standards and testing procedures to reduce the uptake of harmful substances.
Even ways to act on the results of the experiment can have unintended consequences. For example, opening the windows during or after cooking will be useful for removing pollutants, but will expose the indoor environment to ozone particles and other external substances, which could aggravate the problems. of atmospheric pollution.
Although the findings of this study may seem worrisome, some people may make other changes if they wish to reduce the level of pollutants that they create in general. "Anything that burns (such as gas stoves, toasters, stoves) produces particles and pollutants," says Sharpe. "It is therefore useful to use extractor fans and to cook the rear rings as far as possible. some homes are labeled as low VOC. Some things are not well labeled, but people with health problems should take a precautionary approach. "
A more dramatic change would be from gas cooking to cooking with electricity – the researchers found that much of the pollutants were released from cooking as a by-product of cooking. chemicals involved. Another solution would be to eat less meat, which contains a lot of fat, and to steam vegetables instead of frying or cooking them.
However, if you wait for a more radical change, you wait a moment. Currently, policymakers do not have enough evidence to develop indoor air pollution regulations or the most appropriate type of cooktop.
"In external terms, we can categorically say that air pollution causes respiratory and cardiovascular problems, but that in the indoor environment it is still relatively new," says Fussell. "The important thing is that we can say that it is possible to have adverse health effects, but there is still a lot of research to be done before we know for sure."
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