Sniff-testing for indoor air contaminants from new buildings environment detecting by aspiration-type ion mobility spectrometry

Abstract

New construction materials, building and car interiors, and furnishings typically cause air pollution by means of emitting toxic chemical substances indoors. The level of health hazard to the occupants depends on the emission rate of the pollutants, the period of occupant exposure to the pollutants and the concentration of the emitted toxic substances. Typical health effects induced by the indoor air contaminants include symptoms such as dizziness, light-headedness, concentration trouble, nausea, epistaxis, eyes, nose and throat irritation, dryness of nose and throat, and decreased mucous flow rate. Traditional offline indoor air detection techniques, namely, mass spectrometry (MS), gas chromatography (GC) and UV spectroscopy involve collection of indoor air samples from the field followed by laboratory analysis. Because these techniques are slow and time consuming, online indoor air detection and monitoring techniques which are fast, reliable and accurate enough to trigger more extensive analysis are required. In this paper, ion mobility spectrometry for an alternative indoor air detection technique is studied. An aspiration-type ion mobility spectrometer (IMS), in the form of a portable and handheld unit, is employed for the online detection of indoor air contaminants. By means of sniff tests performed on the 62 most commonly occurring indoor air contaminants, the sensitivity of aspiration-type IMS technique towards the indoor air contaminants and hence its suitability for indoor air quality detection is evaluated and demonstrated.