Assessment of persistent indoor VOCs inside public transport during winter season.

ABSTRACT

The present work intends to analyze the pollution level at the indoor environments of the public transport units of León Guanajuato, Mexico during winter season. An identification and quantification of persistent organic pollutants were carried out within three of the principal bus lines of the city in order to determine their possible origin, the differences in the levels of contamination between routes, and the potential risk to the health of the users, these analyses were carried out with different statistical techniques (ANOVA, PCA, and correlation network maps). Fourteen different organic compounds were identified as persistent pollutants. Although toluene and hexane were the compounds that were detected at the highest concentrations (average of 86.52 ± 56.1 µg m-3 and 183.33 ± 10.7 µg m-3, respectively), the correlation analysis showed that xylene, styrene, and ethylbenzene were the compounds that were mostly related to the other compounds identified as persistent. Otherwise, the statistical analysis of the concentration of these pollutants allowed to establish the fuel combustion vapors as the main source of these compounds. In the same way, the potential exposition health risk to the users were calculated in accordance to the Environmental Protection Agency of United States on those commuters grouped as students and workers. This analysis shown that the xylenes are the most representative organic pollutant in this particulate indoor spaces, and is the one with potential to generate a greater risk to the health of the bus-users, this without demising the potential danger of other pollutants.