indoor air quality research paper

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• 08 February 2023

Hidden harms of indoor air pollution — five steps to expose them

• Alastair C. Lewis   ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4075-3651 0 ,
• Deborah Jenkins 1 &
• Christopher J. M. Whitty 2

Alastair C. Lewis is a professor of atmospheric chemistry, National Centre for Atmospheric Science and University of York, and Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories, University of York, Heslington, York, UK.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Deborah Jenkins is specialist registrar in public health, Department of Health and Social Care, UK.

Christopher J. M. Whitty is chief medical officer for England.

You have full access to this article via your institution.

Cooking stoves emit large amounts of particulate matter, which can have inflammatory and carcinogenic properties. Credit: Youngduk Ko/EyeEm

Air pollution is a leading cause of illness — from asthma 1 to heart disease, stroke, lung cancer 2 and, probably, dementia 3 . For outdoor air pollution, improved standards and regulations, guided by science, have over the past three decades markedly driven down emissions of particulates, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide in many parts of the world 4 . Indoor air pollution hasn’t received the same attention, even though it might cause almost as many deaths globally — 3.2 million in 2020, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), compared with around 3.5 million linked to polluted outdoor air (see go.nature.com/3jngf7x ).

In industrialized nations, most people spend 80–90% of their time indoors — in private homes as well as in public spaces such as schools, workplaces, transport hubs, hospitals and supermarkets. Such spaces are typically not subject to legally enforceable ambient air-quality standards. By contrast, global recommendations for how countries should assess and manage their outdoor air quality, made by the WHO, the United Nations Environment Programme and others, have been widely adopted. These are delivered through national regulations and laws that set minimum air-quality standards to protect the public 5 .

Indoor air pollution kills and science needs to step up

The science of indoor air pollution is also less developed than that of outdoor air, making it hard for governments to target policies and controls. Building owners and operators might not consider air quality their responsibility, or might not know how to improve it or the risks of not doing so. Furthermore, the types and behaviours of pollutants differ inside from outside. Ventilation has a crucial role indoors. Pollutants such as carbon monoxide, which are diluted outdoors, can accumulate inside a room. In addition to pollution, respiratory pathogens, including coronaviruses and influenza viruses, can build up and spread between individuals more readily indoors — as the COVID-19 pandemic and the latest flu outbreaks have demonstrated.

Over years, the health harms of living with poor air quality can cascade. For example, persistent exposure to cancer-causing materials or particulates might increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Here we highlight five areas in which the science of indoor air pollution needs to be developed to inform standards and policies, identify engineering opportunities and provide advice for the public, especially those who are most vulnerable to the health risks.

Understand what’s harmful

Indoor air contains a more diverse range of pollutants than does outdoor air. Some are common to both. For example, wood and coal fires and cooking stoves emit large amounts of particulate matter (those with grain sizes of 2.5 micrometres or less are known as PM 2.5 ). Natural-gas boilers give off nitrogen oxides (NO x ). Other pollutants are much more common indoors. Carbon monoxide is released from incomplete combustion, formaldehyde from building materials and glues, and radon from natural radioactivity in bedrock beneath buildings. All of these can accumulate and reach higher concentrations inside than outside 6 .

Building materials, fabrics and furniture also give off chemicals that can irritate the lungs and eyes. Volatile organic compounds are released from paints, carpets and wood treatments and other household products. Persistent chemicals such as brominated fire retardants are embedded in modern furniture. These chemicals can react to produce secondary pollutants, such as formaldehyde and PM 2.5 , that have inflammatory and carcinogenic properties.

Moulds thrive in damp, poorly ventilated buildings. Inhaling airborne fungal spores from mould can have adverse health impacts for some, such as increased severity of asthma 7 . For example, in November 2022, a UK coroner ruled that the death of a two-year-old boy had been caused by prolonged exposure to black mould in the rented flat he lived in.

Moulds thrive in damp, poorly ventilated buildings. Credit: Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via Getty

Occupants themselves affect indoor air quality. In closed rooms containing many people, such as offices and classrooms, levels of carbon dioxide can become high enough to cause cognitive impairment. Human breath can release droplets or smaller aerosols that carry viruses and bacteria, spreading infections 8 . Volatile organic compounds might also be exhaled, and be produced and absorbed by the skin, affecting how secondary pollutants form.

Such diversity makes it challenging to define what good indoor air quality looks like. Ventilation systems often use CO 2 as a proxy. This metric works well for assessing emissions linked to people and respiration, but says little about the prevalence of volatiles from solvents or spores from mould, for instance.

Researchers need to devise, and policymakers to use, a broad set of metrics for indoor air quality. Such metrics can then be applied to help inform research priorities, control emissions, predict effects, limit exposure and measure outcomes — and to underpin the basic framework of air-quality science that has worked well for controlling outdoor pollution.

Model how pollutants form and accumulate

A pollutant’s concentration indoors depends on five factors 6 . First, the size of sources that release it and sinks that remove it (for example, through filtration, deposition or chemical reaction); second, the concentration of outdoor pollutants, which might enter through vents and windows; third, the amount of airflow and turbulence, which disperse the pollutant; fourth, the extent of exchange of air between outdoors and indoors; and fifth, the dimensions of the space.

Aerosols must be included in climate risk assessment

Some of these parameters can be easily measured, such as the size of a room, outdoor concentration and the rate at which air is exchanged. Others, for example the strengths of sources and sinks, are much harder to assess. Emissions of outdoor pollutants are often quantified relative to activity, such as grams of NO x emitted per vehicle kilometre driven. These are compiled into emissions inventories, some being used for regulatory purposes, others for research. However, few such estimates are available for indoor air.

Researchers need to build better inventories for interior emissions arising from home appliances, materials and human activities. This will be challenging: for example, when measuring emissions of volatile organic compounds from hundreds of household products, how can their compositions and people’s daily exposure to them be captured? PM 2.5 released per kilogram of food cooked needs to be established, and exhaled aerosols from human respiration estimated for a range of body types and levels of physical exertion. Dependencies on individual behaviours should also be explored.

Air purifiers can lower levels of particulates indoors, but are an expensive option. Credit: Jean Chung/Getty

Models of indoor air chemistry are needed to evaluate the rates at which pollutants are removed or form. Some models have been adapted from outdoor atmospheric-chemistry mechanisms, to account for reduction in light and ultraviolet levels and to estimate loss of pollution from indoor surfaces such as furnishings 9 . But the processes by which chemicals degrade indoors differ from those for outdoors. Oxidation (the loss of one or more electrons by a molecule) is important, and can transform relatively benign indoor chemicals such as methane into harmful compounds, including formaldehyde and secondary PM 2.5 (ref. 10 ). At low indoor UV levels, gases such as nitrate (NO 3 ), ozone and chlorine have a greater role in oxidation than do hydroxyl (OH) radicals, the dominant outdoor oxidant.

Atmospheric chemistry: China’s choking cocktail

Observations against which to benchmark models are also scant for indoor air. It is difficult to access private spaces to gather data in homes or workplaces, for example. Experiments studying indoor air have historically been low on funders’ priority lists. But research has picked up in the past five years; some data sets have been collected that cover a wide range of chemicals indoors, although only for a handful of test homes, mostly in the United States. Such data sets are key for testing whether assumptions about what controls air indoors are correct and whether interventions are likely to be effective 11 . They should be extended to diverse types of building and construction.

The toxicity of airborne pollutants such as PM 2.5 indoors also needs to be better established. It might differ from that outdoors, because such particles originate from different processes, such as cooking stoves rather than car exhausts. Most epidemiological studies that link air pollution to health impacts have been conducted on data sets based on outdoor air quality. The effects of long-term, low-level exposure to pollutants indoors needs to be better understood.

Explore effects of local variations

The wide diversity in how buildings are constructed, ventilated, operated and occupied is the biggest challenge to the science of indoor air quality relevant to policy. Whereas outdoor-air measurements can be designed to be representative of a wide geographical area, indoor air quality might relate to only one room. It is often difficult to establish what a ‘typical’ indoor concentration of a pollutant might be. Construction styles and materials, climate and energy sources, as well as behaviours and cultural practices, all affect indoor air. In identical houses on the same street, concentrations of volatile organic compounds can differ by factors of around 1,000 owing to differences in occupant behaviour alone 12 . Homes in the United States, Japan or Nigeria, say, can contain different pollutants because of differences in the products used and living arrangements. Such variations could also point to solutions, however, by looking at practices in homes with little pollution.

Long-term data sets and representative surveys on concentrations of indoor-air pollution still need to be established, although some trends can be seen (see ‘Indicators of indoor air quality’). In England, for example, the proportion of homes with damp has more than halved in the past 25 years, in part owing to the wider use of central heating. Domestic coal use, cigarette smoking, chemicals from paints and emissions of NO x from gas combustion are all in decline. By contrast, emissions of volatile organic compounds from cosmetics and personal-care products have risen, as have pollutants associated with wood burning — which is now popular. Ventilation in homes has, on average, fallen as the energy efficiency of housing stock has improved. This is good for reducing CO 2 emissions but not necessarily for indoor air quality. How these trends have combined to affect air in homes and public spaces is unknown.

Sources: English Housing Survey 2020–2021 . https://go.nature.com/4tljhzj ; UK National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory. (Data and analysis courtesy Shona E. Wilde (Univ. York) & Tim Murrells (Ricardo Energy and Environment)

The impacts of climate change, adaptation and decarbonization on indoor air also need to be explored. A shift to wetter, windier conditions tends to reduce outdoor pollutants such as PM 2.5 but might increase damp and moulds inside. Hotter conditions can increase outdoor ozone, which can be drawn indoors. Residents might open windows and increase ventilation, or keep them closed and switch on air conditioning. Climate impacts on indoor air will depend on the age and construction of a building.

Understand the best ways to improve indoor air quality

Decision makers need scientific evidence to help them prioritize groups of interventions and to develop strategies for improving indoor air quality. There are many options, but it is difficult to quantify the effect of each intervention (see go.nature.com/3wv28vt ). Generally, as for outdoors, removing the largest sources of emission is most effective. That might mean replacing gas cookers with electric stoves, or reformulating products — for example, changing sprays such as deodorants and air fresheners that contain butane and propane to use nitrogen or air instead. Some indoor sources are surprisingly large — in the United Kingdom, compressed-aerosol cans now release more volatile organic compounds than do petrol cars 13 .

For moulds, bioaerosols and CO 2 , good building-management practices that ensure adequate heating, airflow and air exchange with outdoors are effective 14 . Increasing ventilation will create energy trade-offs, because heat is lost in colder weather, but engineered solutions are feasible.

Huge gaps in detection networks plague emissions monitoring

Air filters (sometimes called purifiers) are good at lowering levels of particulates indoors, including PM 2.5 , bioaerosols and viruses, but are less effective for gaseous pollutants. Air filtration is expensive and energy-consuming; in some places, it might be more effective to open a window. Predictive models providing bespoke advice for building owners are needed.

Decarbonizing buildings affords an opportunity to rethink how indoor air quality can be managed and improved. Balancing the need to increase ventilation yet minimize energy loss through heating (in colder countries) or cooling (in hotter ones) is an important engineering challenge. Better insulation to reduce energy consumption needs to be set against adequate ventilation to avoid pollution collecting indoors.

Heat exchangers offer one solution, by recapturing energy in a fluid before air leaves the house. But these are expensive and hard to install in older buildings. The effects of various technologies designed mainly for decarbonization need to be quantified.

Bolster science-based advice

A scientific road map to cleaner indoor air will need to work through many challenges. Who is most exposed and where? What are the key sources of pollution? What beneficial actions (technical, behavioural and regulatory) would have the greatest impacts? The scientific community must provide evidence to make these decisions and encourage action. Whereas scientific efforts must be global if they are to capture the ranges of buildings, behaviours and weather, science-based advice for cleaner indoor air will inevitably be country- and region-specific.

Monitoring the indoor environment for pollution should become standard practice in public spaces. Indoor emission inventories need urgent investment. Better advice on reducing indoor exposure without reducing energy efficiency will need to lean heavily on measurements. Long time series must be established in representative public buildings and homes to inform future building standards.

Interventions such as ventilation and innovations involving filtration and UV need to be fully characterized. Each solution will address only a subset of effects, and multiple actions will be needed. As with most public-health interventions, many incremental improvements leading to wholesale change are more likely to be effective than is waiting for a small number of transformational improvements.

It is essential that decarbonization, building improvement and gains in indoor air quality are, as much as possible, delivered equitably across society. Strategies that rely on householders investing in, for example, installing heat pumps, air filters and ventilation systems will skew benefits towards those who can afford to pay.

People most affected by poor indoor air quality, and who are in poor health to begin with, tend to be those on lower incomes, living in homes that rely on older gas or solid-fuel heating, homes with damp and those situated in areas of high outdoor pollution. Supporting these people is essential. Low- and middle-income countries face extra challenges, for example where solid fuel such as wood, charcoal or coal remains a major part of indoor cooking and heating.

Local and national governments must ensure that good indoor air quality is delivered for those in shared, social or rented accommodation, and for public indoor spaces. For example, in France, monitoring of a range of pollutants is mandatory in schools. Beyond state intervention, employers must ensure safe, healthy workplaces, including good-quality air.

Just as for outdoors, improving air quality indoors globally requires sustained investment in scientific and engineering research and international collaborations that share best practice in measurement, modelling and abatement. It is time for researchers to develop the evidence that will allow governments, businesses and individuals to take up the baton and devise science-based global standards for indoor air quality, to reduce emissions, exposure and harms.

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Competing Interests

A.C.L. is currently chair of the Defra Air Quality Expert Group, and the Department for Transport Science Advisory Council.

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Indoor Air Quality and Health

In the last few decades, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) has received increasing attention from the international scientific community, political institutions, and environmental governances for improving the comfort, health, and wellbeing of building occupants. Several studies on this topic have shown both qualitative and quantitative IAQ variations through the years, underlining an increase in pollutants and their levels. To this aim, IAQ-related standards and regulations, policies for non-industrial buildings, and monitoring plans have been developed in several countries. It has been estimated that people spend about 90% of their time in both private and public indoor environments, such as homes, gyms, schools, work places, transportation vehicles, etc.; thus, IAQ has a significant impact on health and quality of life in general. For many people, the health risks from exposure to indoor air pollution may be greater than those related to outdoor pollution. In particular, poor indoor air quality can be harmful to vulnerable groups such as children, young adults, the elderly, or those suffering chronic respiratory and/or cardiovascular diseases.

Indoor environments represent a mix of outdoor pollutants prevalently associated with vehicular traffic and industrial activities, which can enter by infiltrations and/or through natural and mechanical ventilation systems, as well as indoor contaminants, which originate inside the building, from combustion sources (such as burning fuels, coal, and wood; tobacco products; and candles), emissions from building materials and furnishings, central heating and cooling systems, humidification devices, moisture processes, electronic equipment, products for household cleaning, pets, and the behavior of building occupants (i.e., smoking, painting, etc.).

IAQ can be affected by various chemicals, including gases (i.e., carbon monoxide, ozone, radon), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particulate matter (PM) and fibers, organic and inorganic contaminants, and biological particles such as bacteria, fungi, and pollen. The large number of variables that impact IAQ inevitably leads to a wide range of studies and scientific papers published in journals from many kinds of scientific subjects (e.g., chemistry, medicine, environmental sciences, etc.). To further underline the importance of IAQ studies, the present special issue was published. It includes 22 contributions by some of the main experts in the field of indoor air pollution in public and private buildings and related health concerns.

In particular, an indoor air sampling was monitored by Orecchio et al. [ 1 ] to determine 181 VOCs emitted from several sources (fuels, traffic, landfills, coffee roasting, a street-food laboratory, building work, indoor use of incense and candles, a dental laboratory, etc.) located in Palermo (Italy) by using canister auto-samplers and the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry technique for VOC analysis.

Concerning indoor air in residential houses, the study of Vilčeková et al. [ 2 ] attempted to provide more information about the IAQ of 25 houses in several cities of the Formal Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Air pollutants measured included humidity, total VOCs, PM, and sound pressure. The authors found interesting dependences between characteristics of buildings (year of construction, year of renovation, smoke, and heating system) and chemical-physical measurements (temperature, relative humidity, TVOC, PM 2.5 , and PM 10 ) using statistical approaches (i.e., R software, Van der Waerden test).

The influence of particle size on human indoor exposure to airborne halogenated flame retardants (HFRs), released from consumer products, was investigated by La Guardia et al. [ 3 ]. Their findings demonstrated that the larger, inhalable air particulates carried the bulk (>92%) of HFRs and indicated that contributions and the bioavailability of respirable and inhalable airborne particles should both be considered in future risk assessment studies.

IAQ in enclosed environments was also studied by Chen et al. [ 4 ] who investigated the occurrence and levels of chemicals (including humidity, temperature, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, formaldehyde, TVOCs, ozone, PM 10 and PM 2.5 , and microbial agent concentrations (i.e., bacteria and fungi) in North Taiwan underground subway stations).

Moreover, various studies have been conducted on the health risks of dampness and mold in houses, but few studies have been performed in workplaces and schools. The paper of Lanthier-Veilleux et al. [ 5 ] is an examination of the independent contribution of residential dampness or mold (i.e., visible mold, mold odor, dampness, or water leaks) to asthma, allergic rhinitis, and respiratory infections among students at the Université de Sherbrooke (Quebec, QC, Canada); while the work of Szulc et al. [ 6 ] evaluated the microbiological contamination at a plant biomass processing thermal power station located in Poland.

Among the factors that influence the estimation of human exposure to indoor air pollution, the pattern of human behavior and activity play a fundamental role. Odeh and Hussein [ 7 ] evaluated, for the first time, the human activity pattern of 285 subjects (17–63 years old) residents in Amman (Jordan) in order to use the outcomes in future human exposure studies.

Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is also considered a key contributor to indoor air pollution and public health. In comparison to the large body research on toxicological substances of ETS and concentrations of indoor ETS-dependent PM, less attention has been paid on the correlation between the odor concentration and the chemical composition of ETS. The odor concentrations of field ETS, second-hand smoke (SHS), and third-hand smoke (THS) in prepared samples were determined by Noguchi et al. [ 8 ] using the triangle-odor-bag method, while the chemical compositions of the same samples were determined by proton transfer mass spectrometry. Results of this study evidenced that the main contributing components to the odor of the field ETS samples (acetaldehyde, acetonitrile, acetic acid, and other unknown components with a mass-to-charge ratio ( m / z ) of 39 and 43) were different from those found in SHS and THS samples.

A potential threat to IAQ in indoor environments can be related to the contribution of outdoor pollutants concentrations and rates of infiltration, which affect the concentrations to which people are exposed indoors. Scheepers et al. [ 9 ] investigated the concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), acrolein, formaldehyde, nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ), respirable particulate matter (PM 4.0 and PM 2.5 ), and their respective benz(a)pyrene contents over a period of two weeks in indoor and outdoor locations at a university hospital, found that chemical IAQ was primarily driven by known indoor sources and activities, and did not show evidence of significant contributions of known outdoor local sources to any of the IAQ parameters measured.

In particular, the ventilation rate (VR) is a fundamental parameter affecting the IAQ and the energy consumption of buildings. The manuscript of Batterman [ 10 ] reviews the use of CO 2 as a “natural” tracer gas for estimating VRs in school classrooms, and provides details and guidance for the steady-state, build-up, decay, and transient mass balance methods. The CO 2 tracer approach was also used by Matthews et al. [ 11 ] within a large university building in Manchester to estimate air-exchange rates. The same authors presented an innovative approach based on the use of perfluorocarbon tracers to trace the amount of outdoor material penetrating into the university building and the flow of material within the building itself.

Minimizing indoor air pollutants is paramount to high performance schools, due to the potentially detrimental effects that VOCs, particulate matter including allergens and molds, and combustion gases may have on the health and wellbeing of students. In addition to their capacity to trigger asthma or allergy attacks, some of these pollutants are notorious for causing flu-like symptoms, headaches, nausea, and irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat. Moreover, a recent research suggests that a school’s physical environment also can play a major role in academic performance. However, newer designs, construction practices, and building materials for “green” buildings and the use of “environmentally friendly” products have the promise of lowering chemical exposure. Zhong et al. [ 12 ] determined VOC concentrations and IAQ parameters in 144 classrooms in 37 conventional and high performance elementary schools in the USA, and found that aromatics, alkanes, and terpenes were the most detected VOCs, whose concentrations did not show significant differences between the two kinds of schools.

This special issue also presents the relationships and potential conflicts between IAQ and passive houses and/or other highly energy-efficient buildings, focusing the attention on the influence of ventilation systems. Wallner et al. [ 13 ] investigated, between 2010 and 2012, whether occupants of two types of buildings (mechanical vs. natural ventilation) experience different health, wellbeing, and housing satisfaction outcomes, as well as whether associations with indoor air quality existed. The study evidenced that inhabitants of energy-efficient, mechanically ventilated homes rated the quality of indoor air and climate significantly higher and, independently of the type of ventilation, associations between vegetative symptoms (dizziness, nausea, headaches) and formaldehyde concentrations as well as between CO 2 levels and perceived stale air were observed.

More topics covered in this special issue are related to the IAQ in healthcare facilities together with the air cleanliness in operating theatres, which are fundamental aspects for preserving the health of both the patient and the medical staff. Numerous monitoring campaigns were performed by Romano et al. [ 14 ] to determine ultrafine particle concentrations in operating theatres equipped with upward displacement ventilation or with a downward unidirectional airflow system. The results demonstrated that the use of electrosurgical tools generate an increase of particle concentration in the surgical area as well as within the entire operating theatre area, strongly related to the surgical ventilation, ventilation principle, and electrosurgical tools used. Cipolla et al. [ 15 ] monitored the VOCs concentrations (including hydrocarbons, alcohols, and terpenes) using passive diffusive samplers in two different anatomical pathology wards in the same hospital, evidencing a different VOC contamination due to the structural difference of the buildings and different organizational systems.

Another theme that emerges from the studies presented in this special issue is the household air pollution (HAP) from the combustion of biomass fuels, including wood, agricultural residues, animal dung, coal, and charcoal, in open fires or traditional stoves. Such inefficient cooking and heating practices are still commonly used in developing countries and release many air pollutants, such as carbon monoxide, oxygenated organics, free radicals, and PM, in particular PM 2.5 , which may be linked to several health complications, including low birth weight, cardiovascular disease, tuberculosis, cataracts, and other respiratory complications.

The study of Kurti et al. [ 16 ] determined whether HAP exposure was associated with reduced lung function and respiratory and non-respiratory symptoms in Belizean adults and children, demonstrating that adults experienced greater respiratory and non-respiratory symptoms; whereas the research conducted by Medgyesi et al. [ 17 ] investigated the effects of exposure to biomass fuel cookstove emissions on women in rural Bangladesh, associated with acute elevated PM 2.5 concentrations, and evidencing a decrease in pulmonary function. Novel evidence that using cleaner fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) with respect to dirty fuels like wood/straw for domestic cooking is associated with a significant lower probability of chronic or acute diseases was demonstrated by Nie et al. [ 18 ], in their study on women in rural China. These findings support literature data showing that inefficient biomass burning stoves may cause high levels of HAP and threaten long-term health diseases. To reduce HAP in developing countries, clean cooking programs and strategic governmental policies should be adopted, taking into consideration the main factors influencing adoption beyond health, such as cost, taste, fears, and cultural traditions, as evidenced in the study of Hollada et al. [ 19 ] assessing the attitudes, preferences, and beliefs about traditional versus liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stoves in primary cooks and their families in rural Puno, Peru.

Residential exposure to radon is strictly associated with lung cancer risk; thus, radon monitoring in households located in areas classified by United States–Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) as zones with high potential radon exposure is essential to safeguard the health of residents. Stauber et al. [ 20 ] presented a pilot study to monitor radon levels in 201 households located in Dekalb county (GA, USA), and found that radon exceeded EPA moderate risk levels in 18% of households and high risks in 4% of the homes tested, suggesting that a more extensive radon screening is needed in the entire county.

Taking into account the increasing IAQ concerns and complaints, it becomes important to develop a practical diagnostic tool for proper IAQ management. The study of Wong et al. [ 21 ], conducted in Hong Kong, proposes a stepwise IAQ screening protocol to facilitate cost-effective IAQ management among building owners and managers and to identify both lower and higher risk groups for unsatisfactory IAQ. Furthermore, the study of Marques and Pitarma [ 22 ] led to the development of an IAQ system through web access and mobile applications to monitor the IAQ of different building rooms in real time.

As seen, the contributions to this special issue cover a large area of IAQ-related studies, and it is expected that more deep research will be stimulated and conducted as a result of this special issue.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the authors and reviewers that made this special issue possible.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Environmental Pollution in the Moscow Region According to Long-term Roshydromet Monitoring Data

• Published: 02 November 2020
• Volume 45 , pages 523–532, ( 2020 )

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• G. M. Chernogaeva 1 , 2 ,
• L. R. Zhuravleva 1 ,
• Yu. A. Malevanov 1 ,
• N. A. Fursov 3 ,
• G. V. Pleshakova 3 &
• T. B. Trifilenkova 3  

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Long-term Roshydromet monitoring data (2009–2018) on the pollution of the atmosphere, soil, and surface water are considered for the Moscow region (Moscow city within its new boundaries and the Moscow oblast). The air quality in the megacity (Moscow) and in background conditions (Prioksko-Terrasny Reserve) is compared.

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Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119017, Moscow, Russia

G. M. Chernogaeva

Central Administration for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring, 127055, Moscow, Russia

N. A. Fursov, G. V. Pleshakova & T. B. Trifilenkova

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Correspondence to G. M. Chernogaeva .

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Russian Text ©The Author(s), 2020, published in Meteorologiya i Gidrologiya, 2020, No. 8, pp. 9-21.

About this article

Chernogaeva, G.M., Zhuravleva, L.R., Malevanov, Y.A. et al. Environmental Pollution in the Moscow Region According to Long-term Roshydromet Monitoring Data . Russ. Meteorol. Hydrol. 45 , 523–532 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3103/S1068373920080014

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Received : 06 February 2020

Revised : 06 February 2020

Accepted : 06 February 2020

Published : 02 November 2020

Issue Date : August 2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3103/S1068373920080014

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