Indoor mass concentrations of particulate matter in hospital environment

Abstract

<p>The assessment of the air quality of indoor environment where people usually spend extended time periods, especially for sensitive population groups such as patients during their hospitalization, is of major importance. Ensuring a safe level of air quality in these indoor environment serves as an amelioration factor for human health not only for the often habitués of those indoors places, but also for the working personnel that spend more than 90% of their time indoors. In that aspect the concentration of coarse (PM<sub>10</sub>) and fine (PM<sub>2.5</sub>, PM<sub>1.0</sub>) particulate matter was measured in two Intensive Care Units (ICU), with different spatial and trespassing characteristics, of the Democritus University Hospital situated at Alexandroupolis, Greece. The measurements were conducted with the application of two portable aerosol monitoring equipment (TSI DustTrak 8520 and Grimm 107).</p>
 <div>
 <p>The results indicated that the 24-h average concentrations were below the indicative limits proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) (50 and 25 μg m<sup>-3</sup> for PM<sub>10</sub> and PM<sub>2.5</sub> respectively). Relatively elevated instant concentration levels (>100 μg m<sup>-3</sup>) were also recorded during specific activities and in conjunction with the temporal variation of the observed concentration levels raised questions regarding the side effects of cleaning activities.</p>
 </div>
 <p> </p>