Impacts of heatwaves on the indoor air quality of offices and their occupants: A glimpse of the future?

TY - GEN

T1 - Impacts of heatwaves on the indoor air quality of offices and their occupants

T2 - 13th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, Indoor Air 2014

AU - Carslaw, Nicola

AU - Terry, Andrew

AU - Ashmore, Mike

PY - 2014/1/1

Y1 - 2014/1/1

N2 - A heatwave across Europe in 2003 made headlines for extreme temperatures, high ozone concentrations and thousands of excess deaths. Such events are likely to increase in frequency, as climate change impacts are more keenly felt. Furthermore, as the main source of indoor ozone is from outdoors, increased chemical processing indoors is also likely to result. This paper investigates potential impacts on office air quality with a detailed chemical model, using the 2003 heatwave as an example. For a typical landscape office in Athens, indoor concentrations of ozone could reach 45 ppb, with PM2.5 concentrations up to 25 μg/m3. Around 7 μg/m3 of this total was down to the outdoor chemistry in Athens providing a primed mixture of gas-phase precursors that could readily form aerosol once indoors. The secondary organic aerosol composition indoors was dominated by organic nitrogen species, with peroxide species gaining more importance during cleaning activities in offices.

AB - A heatwave across Europe in 2003 made headlines for extreme temperatures, high ozone concentrations and thousands of excess deaths. Such events are likely to increase in frequency, as climate change impacts are more keenly felt. Furthermore, as the main source of indoor ozone is from outdoors, increased chemical processing indoors is also likely to result. This paper investigates potential impacts on office air quality with a detailed chemical model, using the 2003 heatwave as an example. For a typical landscape office in Athens, indoor concentrations of ozone could reach 45 ppb, with PM2.5 concentrations up to 25 μg/m3. Around 7 μg/m3 of this total was down to the outdoor chemistry in Athens providing a primed mixture of gas-phase precursors that could readily form aerosol once indoors. The secondary organic aerosol composition indoors was dominated by organic nitrogen species, with peroxide species gaining more importance during cleaning activities in offices.

KW - Cleaning

KW - Detailed chemical model

KW - Indoor air pollution

KW - Limonene

KW - Ozone

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84924744366&partnerID=8YFLogxK

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:84924744366

SN - 978-1-63439-731-5

VL - 1

SP - 14

EP - 19

BT - Indoor Air 2014

PB - International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate

Y2 - 7 July 2014 through 12 July 2014

ER -