Abstract
The importance of air quality in residential buildings was well known, but indoor air pollution in office and school buildings has not received attention. This paper aims to analyse the exposure levels and health effects of indoor pollutants in office and school buildings in the Yangtze River Delta, China. The literature from 1980 to 2020 about indoor pollutants in this zone were systematically reviewed. The Composite Index Method was used to evaluate the indoor air quality. The DALYs (disability-adjusted life years) approach and the health risk assessment model were used to perform health risk assessment. The results showed that five pollutants exceeded the Chinese indoor air quality standard by more than 50%. In office buildings, 57, 59.7, 61.5, 61.1 and 85.7% of the samples had the higher concentrations of PM2.5, formaldehyde, benzene, TVOC and ammonia respectively, above the limits in the standards. While 55.2 and 100% of the samples had the concentration of formaldehyde and ammonia exceeding the standard in school buildings. Indoor air quality evaluation results showed that office and school buildings in the Yangtze River Delta were at the light pollution level. In addition, according to DALYs value, the health effects of various pollutants were ranked as PM2.5 > formaldehyde > ammonia > benzene > toluene > xylene. The indoor air pollution in the offices and school buildings in Yangtze River Delta, China had a high standard-exceeding rate. PM2.5 and formaldehyde played the important roles impacting the human health. The polluted levels varied among cities, and the health effects caused by different air pollutants were different.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development of China (2017YFC0702700), and Shanghai Natural Science Foundation (21ZR1444800).
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Chen, J., Huang, X., Li, J., Huang, C., Sun, C. (2023). Indoor Air Quality and Its Health Effects in Offices and School Buildings in Yangtze River Delta. In: Wang, L.L., et al. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Building Energy and Environment. COBEE 2022. Environmental Science and Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9822-5_241
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9822-5_241
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