Fate and exposure to organic compounds emitted indoors
Résumé
In Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the impacts of indoor emissions either at home or at the workplace are often not taken into account. The presented model aims to determine the fate and the exposure of indoor chemical emissions in a room with carpet and furniture. The intake Fraction (iF) which quantifies the fraction of an emission which is taken in by an entire population, has been chosen here as a metric to describe the fate and exposure of pollutants emitted indoors. The developed model accounts for air renewal, degradation in the gas-phase, degradation on surfaces, and finally partition between air, walls and furniture assuming a kinetically limited material transfer between gas-phase and a near-surface film. The model reveals that surface removal can affect the gas-phase concentrations of several chemicals in a relevant manner. Furthermore, typical calculated indoor iF values are in the range of 2.5x 10-4 to 1x10-2 which is patently higher than outdoor values (1x10-9 to 1x10-6).