Effects of Smoking Locations and Room Ventilation on Occupant Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke

Abstract

Non smoker exposure to second hand smoke is still of concern even though smoking free environments have been implemented in public places in Thailand. Thus, smokers have changed their behavior to smoke in their dwellings instead which could cause pollutant transfers from a smoking area to an adjacent non smoking area by air flows between zones. The objective of this study was to investigate relative magnitudes of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in a non smoking area that is adjacent to a smoking residential area. The study was also to demonstrate the effect of room ventilation rates on exposure levels of ETS. All experiments were conducted in a 4.5x3 m², studio-type apartment room with one bathroom. Smoking was occurred in either the bedroom or bathroom with the same rate of 10 cigarettes per day. There were 6 target pollutants under study included nicotine, phenol, 1-hexanol, nonanal, benzoic acid, and hexadecane. Pollutant monitoring using sorbent tubes was conducted for 24 h in both the bedroom and bathroom simultaneously. Ventilation rates and air flows between zones were measured using tracer gas technique. Results show that smoking in the bathroom led to the increased concentration of nicotine of 0.54±0.76 g m^-3 in the bedroom without air conditioning and 1.78±0.30 g m^-3 with air conditioning. However, levels of the other organic pollutants were not varied in the same tendency due to emissions from the use of personal care products containing these compounds. An increase of the room ventilation rate by approximately 10 times resulted in reduction of the nicotine concentration in the smoking room.