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Contribution to volatile organic compound exposures from time spent in stores and restaurants and bars

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology volume 19, pages 660–673 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the American Chemistry Council and the International Society for Exposure Analysis Young Investigator Award to Deborah H Bennett.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Health, National Public Health Institute, Kuopio, Finland

    Miranda M Loh

  2. Exposure, Epidemiology, and Risk Program, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Miranda M Loh, E Andres Houseman, Jonathan I Levy, John D Spengler & Deborah H Bennett

  3. Biomedical Center for Environmental Health and Technology, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts, USA

    E Andres Houseman

  4. Department of Public Health Sciences, University of California, Davis, California, USA

    Deborah H Bennett

Authors
  1. Miranda M Loh
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  2. E Andres Houseman
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  3. Jonathan I Levy
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  4. John D Spengler
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  5. Deborah H Bennett
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Miranda M Loh.

Appendix

Appendix

Table A1, Table A2, Table A3

Table a1 CHAD codes used to derive diaries.
Full size table
Table a2 Number of subjects in each population group from the National Human Activity Patterns Survey by day-typea.
Full size table
Table a3 Percentage of simulated individuals with a visit to restaurants/bars and stores combined, restaurants/bars, grocery stores, and non-grocery stores.
Full size table

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Loh, M., Houseman, E., Levy, J. et al. Contribution to volatile organic compound exposures from time spent in stores and restaurants and bars. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 19, 660–673 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/jes.2008.62

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