AEROSOLS 2018
Exposure in indoor and workplace micro-environments represents the main contribution to the aerosol-related health risk. Indeed, the time spent in such environments along with the possible proximity to the source, reduced ventilation of the buildings, and ineffective local exhaust ventilation may lead to high pollutant concentrations and, then, to high exposures and doses received by workers and occupants. Nonetheless, outdoor micro-environments still symbolize the hot-spots predominantly studied in research activities in terms of exposure to aerosols. Therefore, the main aim of the Workplace and Indoor Aerosols Conferences is to highlight the researches performed by the scientific community on indoor and workplace environments to not underrate the indoor aerosol exposure issues.
AEROSOLS 2018 will be held at University of Cassino & Southern Lazio (Cassino, Italy) on 18-20 April and Otto Hänninen, member of LIFE Index-Air team from THL (Kuopio, Finland) will be present as a key-note speaker with the following work:
Will future buildings, cars and energy production solve our air pollution problem?
Otto Hänninen,National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland
Megatrends and technologies of the 21st century promise us self-driving electric cars that have full protection of passengers also against road dust by using hepa filtering. Energy sector is going through a transition from fossil era to sun, wind, wave and fusion, promising to stop emissions of primary particles and precursor gases of secondary aerosols. For three decades aerosol scientists have used as an argument for the harmfulness of ultrafine particles the respiratory tract deposition curves that show highest probability of uptake at 10-50 nm size range. However, seldom it is accounted for how the infiltration of the aerosols from outdoor air into indoor spaces in buildings – or vehicles, to that matter – affects respiratory tract uptake efficiency. The presentation combines results from physically based aerosol size dependent infiltration model with the well-known respiratory tract deposition efficiency to show a somewhat unexpected result on the presumably “most toxic particle sizes.” Nevertheless, the future building stock, becoming ever more energy efficient, insulates us better and better from outdoor air pollution meanwhile simultaneously optimizing energy needs and related emissions. Only our ever increasing space needs counter-balance this favourable development.
More information: www.aerosols2018.eu
