School Air Quality: Pollutants, Monitoring and Toxicity

Abstract

In recent years the use of synthetic materials in building andfurnishing, the adoption of new lifestyles, the extensive use ofproducts for environmental cleaning and personal hygiene havecontributed to the deterioration of the indoor air quality (IAQ) andintroduced new sources of risk to humans. Indoor environments includehome work places such as offices, public buildings such as hospitals,schools, kindergartens, sports halls, libraries, restaurants and bars,theatres and cinemas and finally cabins of vehicles. Indoor environmentsin schools have been of particular public concern. According to recentstudies, children aged between 3 and 14 spend 90 % of the day indoorsboth in winter and summer. Adverse environmental effects on the learningand performance of students in schools could have both immediate andlifelong consequences, for the students and for society. In fact,children have greater susceptibility to some environmental pollutantsthan adults, because they breathe higher volumes of air relative totheir body weights and their tissues and organs are actively growing.This review describes methods for the assessment of indoor air qualityin schools. To this aim, monitoring strategies for sampling andmeasurement of indoor air pollutants will be discussed. The paper's goalinvolves four major points: (1) characteristics of indoor environments,chemical pollutants and their sources within school; (2) monitoringstrategies; (3) sampling and analysis techniques; (4) an overview offindings from scientific literature. Finally, we summarize availableknowledge about IAQ in schools highlighting key gaps and suggestingpriority topics and strategies for research. Moreover, it providesuseful tools to support the stakeholder for development of strategies ofprevention and mitigation in school environments in order to improve theindoor air quality.