The Distribution of Contaminants in the Indoor Office Environment

Details

• Personal Author:
  Barsan M ; Sieber, W. Karl
• Description:
  Health symptoms experienced by workers are often assumed to be related to the presence of contaminants in the working environment In order to understand the relationship between symptoms and exposure to contaminants, a knowledge of the concentrations of these contaminants and their distribution is necessary. Typically occupational environmental data is assumed to follow a log-normal distribution. Conditions for log-normality may include: a) contaminant concentrations cover a wide range of values; b) a large proportion of the concentrations lie close to given value; c) differences between measured concentrations are of the magnitude of the measured concentrations; and d) there is a limited probability of very large values or data 'spikes' (Leidel et al. 1977). Distributions other than the log-normal, most notably the gamma distribution, have also been considered for contaminant data and may be applicable under certain conditions (Berry and Day 1973; Eberhardt and Gilbert 1976). The applicability of the log-normal and gamma distributions to characterize contaminant concentrations measured in the indoor office environment was examined in this study using measured contaminant levels in an occupied office building and a recently renovated office building. The distribution most applicable to conditions in each building was determined. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Air Pollutants, Occupational Air Pollution Air Pollution, Indoor Environmental Exposure Environmental Health Environmental Monitoring Environmental Pollution Occupational Health Particulate Matter Safety
• Keywords:
  Air-contamination Air-quality Air-quality-monitoring Airborne-fibers Airborne-particles Environmental-contamination Environmental-hazards Environmental-health Environmental-health-monitoring Environmental-pollution Indoor-air-pollution Indoor-environmental-quality Organic-compounds Volatiles

  More +
• Publisher:
  American Statistical Association
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  California ; Ohio ; OSHA Region 5 ; OSHA Region 9
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSHEFS - Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations, and Field Studies
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  138-140
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20030742
• Citation:
  Proceedings of the Epidemiology Section from the 1997 Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association, Anaheim, CA, August 10-14, 1997. Alexandria, Viriginia: American Statistical Association 1997 Aug; :138-140
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1997
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Proceedings of the Epidemiology Section from the 1997 Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association, Anaheim, CA, August 10-14, 1997
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:4c259721f16e263e878b7f9d55beb81eb09e3b22e6ab7cda17518ba44f7ee06447417675a3b30c0aa7400fabfc6ee3d5efdb07730202736adc565ee7085028c4
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/191260/cdc_191260_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 278.97 KB ]