Department of Chemistry, University College London, 20 Gordon Street, London WC1H OAJ, UK.
Department of Chemistry, University College London, 20 Gordon Street, London WC1H OAJ, UK.
Environ Int. 2016 Jan;86:84-91. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2015.07.012. Epub 2015 Nov 6.
We present a method to assess the air quality of an environment based on the chemosensory irritation impact of mixtures of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in such environment. We begin by approximating the sigmoid function that characterizes psychometric plots of probability of irritation detection (Q) versus VOC vapor concentration to a linear function. First, we apply an established equation that correlates and predicts human sensory irritation thresholds (SIT) (i.e., nasal and eye irritation) based on the transfer of the VOC from the gas phase to biophases, e.g., nasal mucus and tear film. Second, we expand the equation to include other biological data (e.g., odor detection thresholds) and to include further VOCs that act mainly by "specific" effects rather than by transfer (i.e., "physical") effects as defined in the article. Then we show that, for 72 VOCs in common, Q values based on our calculated SITs are consistent with the Threshold Limit Values (TLVs) listed for those same VOCs on the basis of sensory irritation by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH). Third, we set two equations to calculate the probability (Qmix) that a given air sample containing a number of VOCs could elicit chemosensory irritation: one equation based on response addition (Qmix scale: 0.00 to 1.00) and the other based on dose addition (1000*Qmix scale: 0 to 2000). We further validate the applicability of our air quality assessment method by showing that both Qmix scales provide values consistent with the expected sensory irritation burden from VOC mixtures present in a wide variety of indoor and outdoor environments as reported on field studies in the literature. These scales take into account both the concentration of VOCs at a particular site and the propensity of the VOCs to evoke sensory irritation.
我们提出了一种基于环境中挥发性有机化合物（VOC）混合物的化学感官刺激影响来评估环境空气质量的方法。我们首先将描述刺激检测概率（Q）与 VOC 蒸汽浓度之间关系的心理测量图的 S 形函数近似为线性函数。首先，我们应用一个已建立的方程，该方程基于 VOC 从气相到生物相（例如鼻粘液和泪膜）的传递，来关联和预测人类感官刺激阈值（SIT）（即鼻和眼刺激）。其次，我们扩展了该方程，以包括其他生物学数据（例如气味检测阈值），并包括主要通过“特定”效应而不是通过转移（即“物理”）效应起作用的其他 VOC，如文章中所定义的。然后，我们表明，对于 72 种常见的 VOC，基于我们计算的 SIT 的 Q 值与基于相同 VOC 的感官刺激的美国政府工业卫生学家会议（ACGIH）列出的阈值限值（TLV）一致。第三，我们设定了两个方程来计算给定空气样本中包含的许多 VOC 可能引起化学感官刺激的概率（Qmix）：一个基于响应加和的方程（Qmix 范围：0.00 到 1.00）和另一个基于剂量加和的方程（1000*Qmix 范围：0 到 2000）。我们通过表明这两个 Qmix 范围都提供了与文献中现场研究报告的各种室内和室外环境中存在的 VOC 混合物的预期感官刺激负担一致的值，进一步验证了我们的空气质量评估方法的适用性。这些范围考虑了特定地点 VOC 的浓度以及 VOC 引发感官刺激的倾向。
