PAHs in Household Floor Dust Collected in Amman, Jordan

Abstract

People are exposed to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) outdoors and indoors. Although there is a fair amount of literature review concerning exposure to settled dust, and in particular, to PAHs indoors, no attempts have been made to report contamination in household settled floor dust in Jordan. In this study we aimed at identifying the source origin of the PAHs as indoors or outdoors inside eight selected dwellings in Amman, Jordan. We also aimed at investigating the spatial variation of the analyzed PAHs concentrations within Amman. The floor dust samples were collected from the entrance and living room areas. The total PAHs concentrations at the living room area ranged from 65422 ng/g to about 641 ng/g. At the entrance area, the highest total PAHs concentration was about 9266 ng/g and the lowest was about 241 ng/g. The differences among dwellings for the total and individual PAHs concentrations confirms that each dwelling has its own environmental conditions and we cannot make a general conclusion with respect to the source origin as indoors or outdoors. The spatial variation of the PAHs concentrations showed that the northeastern part of Amman had lower PAHs concentrations than that observed in the southwestern part. This agrees well with a previous study about the spatial variation of fine aerosol particle number concentrations measured within the city during the same period by Hussein et al. who reported that fine particle number concentrations in the north eastern part of the city is lower than that in the south western part.