surfaces Archives - IndoorChem

Indoor Particulate Matter And How to Limit Your Exposure

By Julia Bakker-Arkema and Marina Vance. This video was entered in the 2019 AAAR conference video competition and won 1st prize! Congratulations to Julia and Nina. We see and experience particulate matter, or aerosol particles, all around us. Aerosol particles make up the smog we see on our morning commutes, the trails of smoke that rise […]

How does microbial growth in carpet dust impact microbial volatile organic compounds?

By Sarah Haines, PhD Candidate, The Ohio State University, @SarahRHaines We are excited to announce the recent publication of our paper, titled “Modeling microbial growth in carpet dust exposed to diurnal variations in relative humidity using the “Time-of-Wetness” framework” in the journal Indoor Air. This work is a culmination of research investigating how changes in […]

Disinfectants and COVID-19

By: Delphine Farmer (@ChemDelphine) and Marina Vance (@marinavance) With growing concerns over Coronavirus, more people are turning to the power of disinfectants to clean surfaces – and that is giving rise to a new set of indoor chemistry. While ordinary soap is surprisingly effective at breaking down the Coronavirus, bleach, alcohol, and ammonia are all […]

Organic compounds in indoor air like to accumulate in paint

By Lucas Algrim, a recent PhD student in Paul Ziemann’s research group at University of Colorado Boulder. A range of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can be found in the indoor environment. Many VOCs will be ventilated out of the building by the air handling system, but they can also sorb to indoor surfaces, in other […]

Ozone: Friend or Foe?

By Julia Bakker-Arkema and Marina Vance. When we think of “ozone”, many of us think about the hole in the ozone layer, located high up in the stratosphere—about 12 kilometers, or 7 miles above the earth’s surface. It’s much higher than Mount Everest and most types of clouds. The ozone layer is important because […]

How does flooring type impact your indoor chemistry and indoor microbiology?

This blog post was written by Karen C. Dannemiller, Sarah Haines, and Rachel Adams. Their contact information is at the bottom of this post. Carpets are a favored flooring type. They can be soft, cozy, and warm – and help with keeping noise levels down. Carpet can even help prevent injury. While these attributes are well […]

The ARTISTIC Field Campaign: an interview with Demetrios Pagonis

One of the biggest conclusions from the ARTISTIC campaign is how much people and our indoor activities impact indoor air quality, from the emissions on our breath, the emissions that come from our activities and the chemical products that we use; these things all change the chemistry of indoor spaces.

Cleaning floors with bleach significantly alters indoor air chemistry

“When we wash with bleach, the oxidation occurs not only on the surface we are washing but everywhere else too”. Carslaw agrees, adding that bleach washing produces a much “wider group of chemicals than previously thought”, and that “chemists need to work much more closely with toxicologists” in order to determine the health impacts of the resulting, chemically-altered air.

Humans Identified as the Largest Source of Volatile Organic Chemicals in Indoor Air

US researchers found that people and their possessions directly emitted 57% of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) they measured in the air of a university lecture theatre. We spend approximately 90% of our life inside, where concentrations of VOCs are consistently found to be much higher than in outdoor air. This research is one of the first few to detail the important role that emissions from direct human occupancy plays here.

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