Abstract
House settled dust (HSD) contains various hazardous materials, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and metals. Exposure to toxicants contained in HSD is of paramount concern especially in the case of young children, due to their particular behavioral characteristics. In this context, extracts of sieved vacuum cleaner dust from 20 residences with young children were examined for the presence of PAHs and trace metals, in Athens, Greece. The results indicated that PAHs and metals were ubiquitous in the studied residences. The calculated enrichment factors (EF) of trace metals indicated that Cu, Se, Zn, Hg, Cd, and Pb were mainly of anthropogenic. According to the PCA analysis, the main sources of household dust were: smoking inside the houses, combustion processes, resuspension of soil dust, and vehicle traffic. In general, the cancer risk due to PAHs exposure was found lower than the threshold value. The ingestion of house dust was the most important route of exposure to metals. The dose of almost all elements for the children was found 1–2 orders of magnitude lower than the corresponding reference values. Both the carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic risks of exposure were within the safety limits.
Highlights
Indoor air pollution plays a key role in human health since people spend the largest part of their time in indoor environments and 70–80% of their day in residential environments [1]
The 25 Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were detected in all dust samples, except for perylene, which was not detected in six residences
This is why, the ΣPAH concentrations reported in the present study were in general lower with respect to those recorded in literature, while the metal concentrations were in some cases higher compared to those of previous studies
Summary
Indoor air pollution plays a key role in human health since people spend the largest part of their time in indoor environments and 70–80% of their day in residential environments [1]. Indoor air and dust are the two main pathways ways of exposure to environmental contaminants. Indoor dust is more suitable for estimating human exposure to various chemical substances [2]. Young children are more seriously affected by toxicants in HSD due to their particular behavioral characteristics, such as hand-to-mouth behavior, crawling, frequent mouth breathing, and sucking or chewing dirty toys [3,4,5]. Considering that children spend almost all of their day at home and their breathing zone is very close to the floor, where residential dust tends to accumulate, makes them more susceptible to environmental stressors [6]
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