Abstract
ABSTRACTFormaldehyde is the most common volatile organic compound (VOC) emitted from household materials and is associated with many health risks, including sick building syndrome. A potted Hedera helix was used as an air purifier to remove the gaseous formaldehyde. Development of a test platform is necessary to evaluate the indoor performance of air cleaning protocols. The box modulation with a novel volatile pollutant-emitting source was applied in an air quality monitoring experiment to mimic a non-ventilated workplace. The environmental conditions and the pollutant concentrations in the air were measured in real time, and the monitoring data was uploaded to cloud storage media by a wireless technique. Compared with natural dissipation, our results demonstrate a 70% decrease in the required time to achieve 1.0 ppm of gaseous formaldehyde using the biological purifier. In addition, the effect of photo-regulation was not significant in the use of potted plants to remove gaseous formaldehyde. Our study provides an accurate and available platform for the public to determine the health risks of VOCs in their buildings.
Highlights
Air quality is a global problem causing economic loss and human health threats (Seppänen and Fisk, 2006)
A potted Hedera helix was used as an air purifier to remove the gaseous formaldehyde
Our results demonstrate a 70% decrease in the required time to achieve 1.0 ppm of gaseous formaldehyde using the biological purifier
Summary
Air quality is a global problem causing economic loss and human health threats (Seppänen and Fisk, 2006). Serious health problems are related to sick building syndrome, which is usually associated with the quality of indoor air (Mullen et al, 2016; Mandin et al, 2017). People are usually exposed to a higher intake or breathe in a greater concentration of air pollutants because these pollutants are more prevalent in indoor than outdoor environments (Zhang et al, 2017). Increased industrial development and urban activities have brought about worsened outdoor air quality (Alam et al, 2016). People spend more time indoors, while outdoor air pollution has caused serious hazards to health (Zhang et al, 2017). Understanding and controlling indoor air quality can help reduce the risk of indoor health concerns, especially Legionnaires' disease (Sundell, 2017), respiratory allergy (Guan et al, 2016; Lukcso et al, 2016) and children’s asthma (Huang et al, 2016)
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