Air pollution is usually referred to as air pollution caused by automobile exhaust gas or factory smoke. However, the air pollution that occurs indoors is serious.
In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, air pollution in cities became a serious problem, and there is a strong image of pollution from outside air in many countries. Air pollution adversely affects health. In Britain in 1952, more than 10,000 people died from smog, such as the London smog-like pollution, which sometimes led to death.
However, in recent years, the awareness of air pollution has changed. In developed countries, outdoor air pollution is greatly improved. In the United States, the US Environmental Protection Agency began its activities in 1970, and after the 1970s, the emission of harmful gases such as chlor monoxide and sulfur dioxide decreased by half, and the concentration of particulate matter in the air decreased by 80%.
A 2001 survey in the UK also revealed that only 5% of the time British people spend outdoors, or 1 hour and 12 minutes. For this reason, people who spend more time indoors now need to look at indoor air pollution.
Although research on air pollution has been conducted for several years, little research has been done on indoor air pollution. Charles Weschler, who joined Bell Labs in 1975, was one of the earliest scientists who conducted indoor pollution research. At the time, he discovered the problem that the telephone switching center equipment failed sooner than expected, and he discovered that the line of the equipment was damaged by acidic indoor smog. It can be seen that early research on indoor air pollution focused on keeping things rather than people.
In the 1980s, a new study of sick-building syndrome was conducted. It is starting to become known that the increase in carbon dioxide concentration is likely to occur indoors, but that the concentration of chemical substances used in buildings can be high indoors. Eventually, in the 2000s, as terrorists sprayed biochemical weapons in the air became more realistic, funds for indoor air pollution research began to drop.
However, due to the small number of experts in this field, there were many cases where experts on outdoor air pollution were invited to conduct indoor air pollution research. Pollution meters tailored for outdoor use were unable to measure indoor air pollution with high concentrations, requiring changes to instrument adjustments. There are also problems that may differ depending on behavior patterns or people in investigating air pollution that occurs during daily life such as cleaning or cooking. The biggest cause of indoor air pollution is cooking and cleaning. When cooking is cooked at high temperatures, many organic aerosols are released into the air. Even when cooking with a gas burner rather than an electric plate, the emission of harmful substances increases.
Indoor air pollution occurs everywhere. Cleaning with a bleach mop will spread the bleach component into the air. When cooking is added, harmful substances are generated in response. In addition, indoor air pollution is high even when food is cooked during Thanksgiving in the United States. There is also an experimental result that the concentration of particulates in the air reached 288 mg per square meter. Even New Delhi, India, which the World Health Organization WHO ranks as one of the world’s most dirty major cities, the level of indoor air pollution is quite serious, as the particle concentration is 225mg during the dirtiest period.
Of course, the level of indoor air pollution before cooking is also low, so it doesn’t mean that the indoor air is always polluted. Research on indoor air pollution is still in its infancy, and whether chemicals emitted by cooking or the like cause health damage, such as chemicals emitted by automobile exhaust gas or factory pollution, has not been identified.
In addition, indoor air pollution can be improved so easily that it is incomparable to outdoor air pollution. Air pollution can be prevented by simply installing an appropriate filter or ventilation when cooking. Related information can be found here .