Indoor bioaerosol dynamics

Nazaroff, William W

Among the merits of quantifying emissions from interior sources are these. First, such quantification allows for the assessment of the relative importance of indoor vs. outdoor sources as contributors to the indoor burden. Examine the numerators of equations (1) and (2), and note that in each case, there is a term that is proportional to the outdoor concentration and a term (E) that reflects indoor emissions. If, for a particular bioaerosol component of concern, the indoor emissions term is small compared to the outdoor source, then we can safely focus our attention on the outdoor environment transported via air exchange as the dominant contributor to indoor levels. Conversely, if the indoor emission source greatly exceeds the term associated with the outdoor level, then we can focus on indoor emissions and scale down our attention to the outdoor air as a significant contributor.