Assessment of Indoor Benzene and Its Alkyl Derivatives Concentrations in Offices Belonging to University of Technology (Poland)

Abstract

Indoor air contamination in office rooms is regarded as one of the most important issues in the protection of workers’ health, because contaminants, even those occurring at low concentrations, can cause health problems for the office staff in view of the long exposure time. This paper presents the results of measurements of benzene and its alkyl derivatives (toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, styrene, and 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene)—known indicators of human exposure to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the air in newly renovated offices at University of Technology (Upper Silesia, Poland). Monthly samples of indoor and outdoor air were collected during the years 2018–2019 by passive methods and analyzed by thermal desorption-gas chromatography with flame ionization detector (TD-GC/FID). In the first month of measurements average concentrations of the sum of five VOCs under consideration was 127.7 µg/m3, then in subsequent months between 15.1 µg/m3 to 87.3 µg/m3. The average concentration of carcinogenic benzene was below 1.5 μg/m3. Toluene had the highest concentration among studied VOCs, accounting for as high as 60% and 84% of the total indoor and outdoor VOCs, respectively. High indoor-to-outdoor (I/O) ratios for ethylbenzene (7.1), m,p-xylene (9.8), and styrene (12.5) indicate the dominant role of indoor sources.

Keywords

• VOC
• BTEXS
• I/O ratio
• IAQ
• diffusive samplers