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9 Occupant Responses to Indoor Particulate Matter
Pages 99-116

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From page 99...
... PORTABLE INDOOR AIR CLEANERS AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR Stuart Batterman, who has conducted a number of field studies of indoor environmental exposures and health, began by providing the typical guidance he gives people who have children in Detroit who have asthma: 1. Do not smoke indoors or allow others to smoke indoors.
From page 100...
... "A major take-home here, though, is that we need to identify effective ways to change behavior," he said. Drawing from the literature on interventions, Batterman developed a conceptual diagram for thinking about behavior change to improve health by reducing particulate matter levels using filters (Figure 9-1)
From page 101...
... Based on theory and experimentation, portable air cleaners can reduce particulate matter exposures substantially, and some studies suggest they
From page 102...
... In a study that Batterman and his colleagues did in a low-income community in Detroit, they provided 89 families with HEPA filters fitted with a data logger to capture use history, cash to run the filters in the bedroom of a child in these households who had asthma, and community health worker home asthma education visits (Batterman et al., 2012, 2013; Du et al., 2011; Martenies et al., 2018)
From page 103...
... Batterman noted that operating a portable air cleaner can add over $200 to a household's annual electric bill. Overall, the findings from this study showed that portable air filters can work when they are used, but effectiveness depends on their use, and in particular, on the user's behavior.
From page 104...
... © 2013. Modeling Filter Performance As a follow-up to this study, Batterman and his collaborators used indoor air quality models to estimate indoor exposures to ambient PM2.5, determine an "equivalent" exposure concentration that considers time and activity patterns, estimate the health benefits of using filters in schools and homes, and calculate the marginal costs of increasing filter use (Batterman et al., 2021)
From page 105...
... Some of this might be done, said Batterman, by incorporating both use or runtime information and indoor air quality sensors in air cleaner units and making that information intelligible for the user. A final research need is to improve the controls for portable air cleaners.
From page 106...
... . These data show that "occupants realize that air quality may be influencing them for better or for worse, but we are split on how those perceptions really fall out." When she and her team looked at why people were dissatisfied with indoor air quality, the biggest reasons were tied to odors, with food tending to be the biggest source of dissatisfaction, though other factors such as odors from furniture and cleaning products were also important reasons.
From page 107...
... Graham and her collaborators have begun to explore that at an individual level, attempting to identify what type of information occupants prefer when trying to interpret indoor air quality and what information will lead to easy and accurate interpretation of what the indoor air quality of a space might be. To do this, they identified common environmental quality data visualization tools, generated and tested three different types of data visualizations -- "numeric" (data reported in a table)
From page 108...
... "Without that educational piece, we do not give occupants the potential to help us craft healthy and effective spaces where we can thrive," said Graham. PUBLIC HEALTH RESPONSES TO REDUCE COMMUNITY EXPOSURE TO INDOOR PM2.5 In the workshop's final presentation, Sarah Coefield spoke about how public health air quality districts, emergency operations centers, and nonprofit organizations are working toward the shared goal of creating cleaner indoor air opportunities for people.
From page 109...
... She noted that the role of public health as it relates to wildfire smoke has become much larger than it was a decade ago, and there are now three aspects to that role: • communication: providing advice for creating clean air spaces and reducing exposure, providing health advisories and guidance docu ments, issuing smoke outlooks, and responding to public inquiries • intervention: setting up cleaner-air shelters and providing portable air cleaners and N95 masks • policy work: advocating for cleaner indoor air requirements, adopt ing updated ASHRAE guidance, canceling or postponing events, closing schools, and setting up safeguards for outdoor workers. Regarding policy work, she said that interventions might work in a small community, but when millions of people are exposed to huge amounts of particulate matter, the need is for policies and actions beyond what the local health department can do to safeguard health.
From page 110...
... Interventions Interventions during a smoke event include portable air cleaner distribution and instructions for creating a do-it-yourself air cleaner from a newer box fan and a good HVAC filter, which can be quite effective at removing particulate matter from indoor air. Coefield cautioned, however, that box fans built prior to 2011 had an unfortunate tendency to catch on fire, while newer fans have numerous safety features that prevent that from happening.
From page 111...
... It may be less expensive, for example, to provide air cleaners to people. The Missoula health department partnered with EPA in a study called Advance Science Partnerships for Indoor Reductions of Smoke Exposures2 to better understand indoor air quality in publicly accessible buildings that people might go to as a respite from the smoke (Hagler et al., 2020)
From page 112...
... Montana, for example, now has a rule that schools must limit infiltration during air pollution events and inspect their HVAC systems annually. Washington state has issued school closing guidance, and California has allocated funds for a Wildfire Smoke Clean Air Centers for Vulnerable Populations Incentive Pilot Program and will provide money to upgrade filtration systems and purchase portable air cleaners.
From page 113...
... "We need to get to a place where we actually require cleaner indoor air so we can see the types of changes that we need, because if everything is voluntary, folks find other uses for their money," she said. Asked about the value of adding ultraviolet, ionization, and photocatalytic oxidation systems to existing HVAC systems, both to remove indoor particulate matter and to address COVID-19 concerns, Siegel called this the "kitchen sink" approach to air cleaners and said that none of those devices have been demonstrated to add any value.
From page 114...
... Coefield added that tightening the building envelope can be a good idea for homeowners in areas with poor outdoor air quality, but the trade-off is that indoor-generated particles are trapped inside and it's necessary to mitigate that exposure. Graham noted the importance of educating the public so that people understand how their behaviors and their daily actions influence their indoor air quality.
From page 115...
... OCCUPANT RESPONSES TO INDOOR PARTICULATE MATTER 115 the primary determinant of removal efficiency was particle diameter, which means that a filter can be effective for particulates originating from multiple sources in the same size range. Singer qualified, though, that organic compounds can accumulate on filters during events like wildfires and lead to both odors and subsequent exposures.


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