Abstract
House dust is an important transfer and storage medium of semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) in indoor environments. Dust loading (dust weight per surface area) has been identified as a key factor affecting SVOC transport into dust. As the increment of dust loading, house dust can be classified as monolayer and multilayer dusts. Most of existing studies have only investigated the multilayer dust though the monolayer dust is also ubiquitous on indoor surfaces, precluding the comprehensive explanation of dust loading effects. Therefore, this study proposed a mass transfer model to describe SVOC transport into house dust by differentiating SVOC diffusion distance in monolayer and multilayer dusts. High consistence between model predictions and measurements justified the model performance. Characteristic parameters of SVOCs in house dust, dust-air partition coefficient (Kd) and diffusion coefficient (Dd), were determined by fitting the model to the measurements. Further analysis indicated that: (1) SVOC transport mechanism in monolayer dust (dust size-dependent) was different from that in multilayer dust (dust loading-dependent), and (2) dust loading (in the range of 2.55–30 g/m2) might have insignificant effects on Kd. This study should be helpful for the deep understanding of SVOC transport into house dust and the accurate exposure assessment of indoor SVOCs.
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