Quantitative evaluation of total volatile organic compounds in urban and rural schools of southern Brazil
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Quantitative evaluation of total volatile organic compounds in urban and rural schools of southern Brazil Bianca Dutra de Lima & Rubens Müller Kautzmann & Fernanda Rosa da Silveira & Matheus da Silva Civeira & Fernanda Cauduro de Vargas & Silvio Roberto Taffarel
Received: 19 May 2020 / Accepted: 31 August 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Volatile organic compounds, VOCs, are air pollutants widely produced by biogenic and anthropogenic sources. This work quantitatively studied the presence of these gases in the internal and external environments of schools, comparing one in an urban area (La Salle School, Canoas, RS) and another in a rural area (Santa Cassia Farm School, Nova Santa Rita, RS). The aim of this study was to compare if this environmental differences (location) influence their gases concentration. Monitoring campaigns were conducted for 6 months, occurring every 2 weeks in both schools during class hours, 1 day indoors and 1 day outdoors. The results showed higher concentrations of total volatile organic compounds in the urban school external environment compared with the same rural school environment and, in the comparison between environments, the internal environments of the two schools obtained higher VOC concentrations than the external
B. D. Lima (*) Postgraduate Program in Remote Sensing, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Bento Gonçalves 9500 Porto Alegre RS 91501-970 Brazil e-mail: [email protected] R. M. Kautzmann : F. R. da Silveira : F. C. de Vargas : S. R. Taffarel Postgraduate Program in Environmental Impact Assessment, Universidade La Salle, Av. Victor Barreto 2288 Canoas RS 92010-000 Brazil M. da Silva Civeira Postgraduate Program in Mines, Metallurgy and Materials, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Bento Gonçalves 9500 Porto Alegre RS 91501-970 Brazil
ones, except in November and December at the urban school. Keywords Volatile organic compounds . Schools . Air pollution . Children health
Introduction Increased air pollution caused by photochemical oxidants, especially in urban areas, results in the priority of investigating air quality and its control (Notario et al. 2012). Among atmospheric pollutants, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are those to which populations are most subjected in their daily lives, mainly generated by combustion engines, industrial, domestic and service activities. VOCs are defined as substances having a lower vapour pressure than atmospheric at room temperature, including saturated, unsaturated and oxygenated hydrocarbons such as ketones, carboxylic acids, ethers, aldehydes, esters and alcohols. Differences are known between volatile organic compounds found in outdoor and indoor environments. In indoor air, the main known sources of emissions are products used in the construction, painting, decoration and restoration of houses and buildings, such as wax, furniture, cleaning products, solvents, coating materials, paints and glues. While in outdoor air, the main sources are vehicles and various industrial pro
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