An air of sweat and a fang-tastic meal

Abstract

Sweaty walls In an art museum, it’s what’s on the walls that counts. But what if what’s on the walls includes stuff like sweat by-products and nail polish remover? Lactic acid and acetone were some of the compounds that a group of air-quality researchers tracked floating around a Colorado art museum. Good air is important in the effort to preserve art, but some chemicals are just a little “stickier” than others, says Demetrios Pagonis, one of the chemists at the University of Colorado Boulder who led the study (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2019, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.9b00276). “We think this happens on all indoor surfaces,” Pagonis tells Newscripts, listing places the team has examined—homes, classrooms, the weight room at the university gym. “A lot of molecules stick to surfaces indoors before they get ventilated to outdoor air.” And it just so happens that painted walls are a major sink for volatile organic chemicals,