Elsevier

Atmospheric Environment

Volume 43, Issue 3, January 2009, Pages 706-714
Atmospheric Environment

Effect of interior door position on room-to-room differences in residential pollutant concentrations after short-term releases

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2008.09.032Get rights and content

Abstract

Residential interior door positions influence the pollutant concentrations that result from short-term indoor sources, such as cigarettes, candles, and incense. To elucidate this influence, we reviewed past studies and conducted new experiments in three residences: a single-story 714 m3 ranch-style house, a 510 m3 two-story split-level house, and a 200 m3 two-story house. During the experiments, we released sulfur hexafluoride or carbon monoxide tracer gas over short periods (≤30 min) and measured concentrations in the source room and at least one other (receptor) room for various interior door opening positions. We found that closing a door between rooms effectively prevented transport of air pollutants, reducing the average concentration in the receptor room relative to the source room by 57–100% over exposure periods of 1–8 h. When intervening doors were partially or fully open, the reduction in average concentrations ranged from 3% to 99%, varying as a function of door opening width and the distance between source and receptor rooms.

Introduction

Many people are exposed to harmful indoor air pollutants emitted in their own residences. Indoor air pollutants are often produced by episodic activities under the control of household occupants, such as tobacco smoking, cooking, using candles or incense, or burning fuel in fireplaces or heaters. Levels of exposure resulting from indoor episodic release activities vary considerably depending on several factors such as human activity patterns, building ventilation and filtration system design and operation, proximity between source and receptor, and indoor contaminant transport and fate processes.

Most residences are inherently multizone spaces in which pollutant concentrations can vary among rooms. Nevertheless, very few studies have reported air pollutant measurements in multiple rooms after short-term releases in one room, even though such releases are common sources of indoor air pollutants. More specifically, the effect of interior door positions on the spatial and temporal patterns of indoor pollutant concentrations has received little attention. Our aggregate experience suggests that closing doors can accentuate compartmental effects in houses, providing some protection for occupants when they are in nonsource rooms (Klepeis and Nazaroff, 2006, Ott et al., 2003, Miller and Nazaroff, 2001). Apart from mechanical ventilation or active filtration, which are not considered here, there are a few potential approaches for limiting exposure of an occupant (receptor) to air pollutants that are generated in a home by the activities of another. These three strategies might be considered, either alone or jointly: (1) occupying a different room than the source while (a) leaving the interior door configuration of the house unchanged or (b) closing one or more doors between the source and receptor rooms; (2) opening a window to ventilate the room where pollutant-generating activity is occurring; and (3) opening a window in the receptor room.

This paper focuses on the effects of interior door position on room-to-room variations in pollutant concentrations that result from short-term (≤30 min), localized releases. To do so, we review past empirical studies and present results from new experiments performed in three residences. Our main goal is to provide a synthesis of existing information plus new data and their interpretation on an understudied topic of importance to human exposure to air pollutants.

Section snippets

Background

Löfroth (1993) measured 200-min average room-to-room differences in concentrations of respirable suspended particles (RSP) and other pollutants during cigarette smoking experiments in a 140-m3 apartment and a 300-m3, 3-story townhouse. During two experiments in each home, cigarettes were smoked in the living room and interior doors were left open. The resulting particle concentrations in all three rooms of the smaller apartment agreed to within 20%, whereas concentrations in rooms on other

Study sites

To study the effects of interior door positions on room-to-room variation of airborne pollutant concentrations in houses, we performed tracer-gas experiments in three residences under natural ventilation conditions (see Fig. 1 for the floor plans). House #1 was a large, single-story detached structure in the ranch style, located in Atherton, CA (built 1945; 714 m3 volume; 279 m2 floor area). House #2 was a split-level, detached home in Redwood City, CA (built 1986; 510 m3 volume; 200 m2 floor

Effect of door closure and distance between rooms

The top portion of Fig. 2 illustrates the effects of interroom distance and door position on the SF6 concentration time series measured in the source and receptor rooms of House #1. The smallest compartmental effect was apparent when the den, which is adjacent to the source room (kitchen), was used as the receptor room with its doors open. When the more distant third bedroom was used as the receptor room for the open-doors case, the concentration peak in this room was more rounded, reflecting

Summary and conclusions

We performed controlled experiments in three residences, examining how interior door position affects the concentrations of an inert tracer gas in source and receptor rooms with mechanical air handling and thermal conditioning systems off. We report our results in terms of the percent reduction of average concentrations in the receptor room relative to average concentrations in the source room.

Our main findings are summarized as follows: First, the distance between two rooms of a large house,

Acknowledgments

This research was supported through a grant from the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute (FAMRI) to the Department of Statistics at Stanford University. Some early experiments were supported through grants to the Department of Statistics at Stanford University from the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) of California. We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the loan of air monitoring instruments. We thank Cory

References (29)

  • Diamond, R.C., Feustel, H.E., Dickerhoff, D.J., 1996. Ventilation and Infiltration in High-rise Apartment Buildings....
  • A.C. Drescher et al.

    Mixing of a point-source indoor pollutant by forced convection

    Indoor Air

    (1995)
  • S.J. Emmerich

    Validation of multizone IAQ modeling of residential-scale buildings: a review

    ASHRAE Transactions

    (2001)
  • S.J. Emmerich et al.

    Air and pollutant transport from attached garages to residential living spaces – literature review and field tests

    International Journal of Ventilation

    (2003)
  • Cited by (37)

    • Measuring PM<inf>2.5</inf> concentrations from secondhand tobacco vs. marijuana smoke in 9 rooms of a detached 2-story house

      2022, Science of the Total Environment
      Citation Excerpt :

      Although the double doors were closed, they were not tightly sealed, and each door was 66 cm wide, with a 1.9 cm vertical space between the bottom of the door and the hardwood floor. Ferro et al. (2009) used a pair of matched Brüel and Kjær Model 1302 SF6 monitors to measure the amount of air transfer across doors that were open different distances in 3 homes, one of which was the present house. They found the leakage across the downstairs bedroom door of this house was 4–7 % when the door was completely closed and essentially 0 % when a towel was tightly stuffed underneath the door.

    • Impact of fan mixing on air pollutant exposure near indoor sources: An analytical model to connect proximity effect with energy

      2020, Building and Environment
      Citation Excerpt :

      The same consideration applies to the maintenance of thermal comfort indoors (e.g., is it desired to destratify room temperature?). While a number of studies have shown that higher exposures occur close to an indoor air pollution source (i.e., [2–7,10,50]), our study goes a step further by relating the magnitude of proximity effect to mechanical mixing energy, based on fundamental physics principles. Although the relationship between human exposure, air mixing, air exchange rate and mechanical energy input is complex, we believe this study represents a step towards better understanding the proximity effect and its connection with both human health and energy.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text