Indoor Air Quality at Portuguese Firehouses

Abstract

This work assessed firefighters exposure to gases pollutants in non- fire work settings during the pre-fire season as a baseline for the respective occupational exposure characterization. Indoor air sampling (total volatile organic compoundsTVOCs, ozone-O3, and carbon di oxide-CO2) was conducted for two weeks in the pre-fire season of 2021 in seven firehouses (FH1FH7) situated in the north-interior of Portugal. The result showed that across all FH, TVOCs highly varied with observed levels of 180 g m3 and 11.5 mg m3 (overall median of 1.86 mg m3). Furthermore, at all FH, the observed levels highly exceeded (1.56.6 times) the Portuguese protective thresholds of 600 g m3 for indoor air quality in public buildings. On the contrary, the indoor ozone concentrations (range: 2380 g m3; median 60 g m3) and CO2 (range 8001160 mg m-3: median 924 mg m3) were relatively low and in accordance with existing national standards. While the associations between the pollutants were lowmoderate (|rs|= 0.0300.679) to better identify the respective indoor emission sources, quantification of specific VOC compounds/classes is required in future studies. (c) The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.