Department of Environmental Health, National Public Health Institute, Kuopio, Finland.
J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol. 2009 Nov;19(7):660-73. doi: 10.1038/jes.2008.62. Epub 2008 Nov 12.
Many people spend time in stores and restaurants, yet there has been little investigation of the influence of these microenvironments on personal exposure. Relative to the outdoors, transportation, and the home, these microenvironments have high concentrations of several volatile organic compounds (VOCs). We developed a stochastic model to examine the effect of VOC concentrations in these microenvironments on total personal exposure for (1) non-smoking adults working in offices who spend time in stores and restaurants or bars and (2) non-smoking adults who work in these establishments. We also compared the effect of working in a smoking versus non-smoking restaurant or bar. Input concentrations for each microenvironment were developed from the literature whereas time activity inputs were taken from the National Human Activity Patterns Survey. Time-averaged exposures were simulated for 5000 individuals over a weeklong period for each analysis. Mean contributions to personal exposure from non-working time spent in stores and restaurants or bars range from <5% to 20%, depending on the VOC and time-activity patterns. At the 95th percentile of the distribution of the proportion of personal exposure attributable to time spent in stores and restaurants or bars, these microenvironments can be responsible for over half of a person's total exposure to certain VOCs. People working in restaurants or bars where smoking is allowed had the highest fraction of exposure attributable to their workplace. At the median, people who worked in stores or restaurants tended to have 20-60% of their total exposures from time spent at work. These results indicate that stores and restaurants can be large contributors to personal exposure to VOCs for both workers in those establishments and for a subset of people who visit these places, and that incorporation of these non-residential microenvironments can improve models of personal exposure distributions.
许多人在商店和餐馆中花费时间，但这些微环境对个人暴露的影响却很少受到关注。与户外、交通和家庭相比，这些微环境中的几种挥发性有机化合物（VOC）浓度较高。我们开发了一个随机模型，以研究这些微环境中 VOC 浓度对（1）在商店和餐馆或酒吧工作的不吸烟成年人以及（2）在这些场所工作的不吸烟成年人的总个人暴露的影响。我们还比较了在吸烟和非吸烟的餐馆或酒吧工作的影响。每个微环境的输入浓度是根据文献开发的，而时间活动输入则来自国家人类活动模式调查。对于每种分析，我们对 5000 名个体在一周内的平均暴露情况进行了模拟。在不工作时，非工作时间在商店、餐馆或酒吧的个人暴露平均值从 <5%到 20%不等，具体取决于 VOC 和时间活动模式。在个人暴露归因于在商店、餐馆或酒吧花费时间的比例分布的第 95 个百分位数，这些微环境可能会导致一个人对某些 VOC 的总暴露量的一半以上。在允许吸烟的餐馆或酒吧工作的人，其暴露归因于工作场所的比例最高。中位数情况下，在商店或餐馆工作的人在工作时间的总暴露量中，有 20-60%来自这段时间。这些结果表明，商店和餐馆可能是工人和部分光顾这些场所的人接触 VOC 的主要来源，并且纳入这些非居住微环境可以改善个人暴露分布模型。
