The Reproducibility of Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) Measurement: A Test Case for the Measurement of Key Air Pollutants from the Pan Frying of Fish Samples

• Published in: TheScientificWorld Vol. 2014; no. 2014; pp. 1 - 9
• Main Authors: Bae, Min-Suk, Ahn, Jeong-Hyeon, Kim, Bo-Won, Kim, Yong-Hyun, Kim, Ki-Hyun, Brown, Richard J. C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cairo, Egypt Hindawi Publishing Corporation 01-01-2014; John Wiley & Sons, Inc; Hindawi Limited
• Subjects: Air pollution; Air Pollution, Indoor - analysis; Carbon dioxide; Carbon monoxide; Cooking; Cooking - standards; Environmental aspects; Environmental engineering; Experiments; Fish as food; Frying; Indoor air quality; Lung cancer; Measurement; Molecular weight; Nitrogen dioxide; Particulate Matter - analysis; Pollutants; Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; Reproducibility of Results; Science; Seafood; Studies; Variables; VOCs; Volatile organic compounds
• ISSN: 2356-6140; 1537-744X; 1537-744X
• DOI: 10.1155/2014/236501

To assess the robustness of various indoor air quality (IAQ) indices, we explored the possible role of reproducibility-induced variability in the measurements of different pollutants under similar sampling and emissions conditions. Polluted indoor conditions were generated by pan frying fish samples in a closed room. A total of 11 experiments were carried out to measure a list of key variables commonly used to represent indoor air pollution (IAP) indicators such as particulate matter (PM: PM1, PM2.5, PM10, and TSP) and a set of individual volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with some odor markers. The cooking activity conducted as part of our experiments was successful to consistently generate significant pollution levels (mean PM10: 7110 μg m−3 and mean total VOC (TVOC): 1400 μg m−3, resp.). Then, relative standard error (RSE) was computed to assess the reproducibility between different IAP paramters measured across the repeated experiments. If the results were evaluated by an arbitrary criterion of 10%, the patterns were divided into two data groups (e.g., <10% for benzene and some aldehydes and >10% for the remainders). Most noticeably, TVOC had the most repeatable results with a reproducibility (RSE) value of 3.2% (n=11).