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  • Original Article
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Stochastic modeling of short-term exposure close to an air pollution source in a naturally ventilated room: An autocorrelated random walk method

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology volume 24, pages 311–318 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

For an actively emitting source such as cooking or smoking, indoor measurements have shown a strong “proximity effect” within 1 m. The significant increase in both the magnitude and variation of concentration near a source is attributable to transient high peaks that occur sporadically—and these “microplumes” cause great uncertainty in estimating personal exposure. Recent field studies in naturally ventilated rooms show that close-proximity concentrations are approximately lognormally distributed. We use the autocorrelated random walk method to represent the time-varying directionality of indoor emissions, thereby predicting the time series and frequency distributions of concentrations close to an actively emitting point source. The predicted 5-min concentrations show good agreement with measurements from a point source of CO in a naturally ventilated house—the measured and predicted frequency distributions at 0.5- and 1-m distances are similar and approximately lognormal over a concentration range spanning three orders of magnitude. By including the transient peak concentrations, this random airflow modeling method offers a way to more accurately assess acute exposure levels for cases where well-defined airflow patterns in an indoor space are not available.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Kai-Chung Cheng, Viviana Acevedo-Bolton, Ruo-Ting Jiang, Neil E Klepeis, Wayne R Ott, Peter K Kitanidis & Lynn M Hildemann

  2. California Department of Public Health, Indoor Air Quality Section, Environmental Health Laboratory, Richmond, California, USA

    Kai-Chung Cheng

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  1. Kai-Chung Cheng
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  2. Viviana Acevedo-Bolton
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  3. Ruo-Ting Jiang
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  4. Neil E Klepeis
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  5. Wayne R Ott
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  6. Peter K Kitanidis
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  7. Lynn M Hildemann
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Correspondence to Kai-Chung Cheng.

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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology website

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Cheng, KC., Acevedo-Bolton, V., Jiang, RT. et al. Stochastic modeling of short-term exposure close to an air pollution source in a naturally ventilated room: An autocorrelated random walk method. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 24, 311–318 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/jes.2013.63

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