Development of the household ventilation index and it s application for assessing indoor exposure modeling in selected sites of south india

Abstract

Biomass combustion in indoor kitchens contributes a lot to the Particulate matter less than 2 point 5 micrometers and#956;m in diameter PM 2 point 5 exposure burden among millions of people worldwide Emitted potential pollutants from the biomass combustion oven may enormously degrade indoor air quality during cooking time and impact indoor environments with inadequate ventilation The concept of developing the household ventilation index was anticipated to be a valuable alternative to assess indoor air quality Consequently a new empirical formula of the household ventilation index was developed with the provision of multiple validation processes either through applying the monitored field variables into the formula or through assessing outputs from different statistical models Later on, this study ended up with supportive evidence based insight into residential indoor air quality assessment We measured the required parameters of the equation in different seasons Rainy Winter and Summer with different households in South India Air change per hour ACH and PM considered a surrogate component of indoor air quality concentration for three seasons were also explored The association between PM 2 point 5 and indoor air velocities of three categories less than 0 point 2 0 point 2 to 0 point 4 and greater than 0 point 4 m divided by s in three different seasons in 5 years were also assessed with 147 biomass cooking households rural 102 and urban 45 and then with 192 LPG cooking households rural 59 and urban 133 in Tamil Nadu Considering all three seasons the trends of association among three distinct categories of air velocities with PM 2 point 5 concentrations were found to be similar Same trend was also witnessed between indoor air velocities and ACH However the association between indoor air velocity and PM 2 point 5 was focused categorically Other important variables example used amount of biomass cooking fuel kitchen room index, room temperature and relative humidity were also monitored to observe the ventilation index Howe