Compilation and analysis of types and concentrations of airborne chemicals measured in various indoor and outdoor human environments.

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to summarize and illustrate the results of a literature search on the types, levels, relative concentrations, concentration spread of individual chemicals, and number of airborne compounds (mostly volatile organic compounds, VOCs) that have been found, measured, and reported both indoors and outdoors. Two broad categories of indoor environments are considered: (1) home/school, and (2) commercial spaces. Also, two categories of outdoor environments are considered: (1) non-industrial and (2) industrial (the latter represented by the vicinity of a pig farm and the vicinity of an oil refinery). The outcome is presented as a series of graphs and tables containing the following statistics: geometric mean, arithmetic mean, median, standard deviation, variance, standard error, interquartile distance, minimum value, maximum value, and number of data (data count) for the air concentration of each reported compound in a given environment. A Supplementary Table allows interested readers to match each single value included in this compilation with its corresponding original reference.