Elsevier

Atmospheric Environment

Volume 37, Issue 24, August 2003, Pages 3365-3374
Atmospheric Environment

Determination of tobacco smoking influence on volatile organic compounds constituent by indoor tobacco smoking simulation experiment

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1352-2310(03)00354-6Get rights and content

Abstract

Tobacco smoking simulation experiment was conducted in a test room under different conditions such as cigarette brands, smoking number, and post-smoke decay in forced ventilation or in closed indoor environments. Thirty-seven chemical species were targeted and monitored, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) markers. The results indicate that benzene, d-limonene, styrene, m-ethyltoluene and 1,2,4/1,3,5-trimethylbenzene are correlated well with ETS markers, but toluene, xylene, and ethylbenzene are not evidently correlated with ETS markers because there are some potential indoor sources of these compounds. 2,5-dimethylfuran is considered to be a better ETS marker due to the relative stability in different cigarette brands and a good relationship with other ETS markers. The VOCs concentrations emitted by tobacco smoking were linearly associated with the number of cigarettes consumed, and different behaviors were observed in closed indoor environment, of which ETS markers, d-limonene, styrene, trimethylbenzene, etc. decayed fast, whereas benzene, toluene, xylene, ethylbenzene, etc. decayed slowly and even increased in primary periods of the decay; hence ETS exposure in closed environments is believed to be more dangerous. VOCs concentrations and the relative percentage constituent of ETS markers of different brand cigarettes emissions vary largely, but the relative percentage constituent of ETS markers for the same brand cigarette emissions is similar.

Introduction

Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) was classified as Group A carcinogen by USEPA (1994). More and more scientific evidences indicate that ETS increased the risks of lung cancer, heart disease, and respiratory tract infections (USEPA, 1992) and also was regarded as an important source for increasing indoor pollutants (Jones, 1999; Rufus et al., 2001). At present, there are about 320 million smokers in China, and 750,000 people die each year from the illness associated with ETS. The average percentage of adults smoking is 38.17% in Guangdong province, which is 0.55% higher than the average level in China (CD120, 2002). The death rate caused by lung cancer and respiratory tract disease is much higher in Guangzhou than in other places of Guangdong province, resulting partly from environmental factors including ETS.

Up to now, more than 4000 compounds including a lot of toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) (e.g., benzene, styrene, 1,3-butadiene) have been identified in ETS. Owing to the complication and multiple sources of VOCs, the study results on ETS by different researchers were not always in agreement. For example, the result of Heavner et al. (1995) by studying 49 smoking/nonsmoking homes showed that benzene and styrene were not correlated well with ETS markers, but the result of Kim et al. (2001) by analyzing 12 smoking/nonsmoking homes indicated a good correlation. As both results were achieved from real world ETS exposures, an advanced study connecting laboratory simulation with real world is necessary for distinguishing ETS effect from VOCs exposure of different sources. In previous studies, gas phase nicotine was widely used as ETS marker, but the suitability of nicotine as a smoking marker has been questioned because of its absorption by indoor surface effect. 3-ethenalpyridine (3-EP) is generally considered to be a much better ETS marker (Nelson et al., 1992; Ogden and Matin, 1997). 2,5-dimethylfuran is also suggested to be a strong indicator of smoking status and equally effective as a blood biomarker for smoking, but its source and suitability compared with other ETS markers call for further study (Gordon, 1990; Gordon et al., 2002; Ashley et al., 1996).

A chamber was generally used as a means to study tobacco smoking exposure under some controlled conditions. However, the indoor conditions of ETS in real world are more complicated than those in a chamber. There are many factors which can affect the final results, such as the cigarette brand, mainstream smoke or sidestream smoke, indoor miscellaneous pollution sources, adsorption/desorption of the building materials to VOCs and indoor air change rate, etc. (Jones, 1999; Hodgson et al., 1996; Van Loy et al., 2001; Won et al., 2001). In order to further recognize the characteristics of VOCs and their harmfulness to the health of human beings exposed to ETS, in this study, a spare office with simple pollution sources was selected to simulate tobacco smoking. VOCs and ETS markers were measured and correlation analysis and factor analysis were used to try to find out the potential relationship between them.

Section snippets

Experiment scenarios

Experiments were carried out in a spare office in Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, which is adjacent to the agriculture academy and several universities. There are no industry plants around the institute within 5 km, but a new arterial traffic was built recently and separated by a hill 500 m from the south. Hence, the outdoor air is relatively clean and stable.

The spare office selected as test room is located in the fourth floor of a new building, which is a standard office in south China and

VOCs sources apportionment

Factor analysis and correlation analysis were preformed on 39 samples (22 for smoking, 17 for nonsmoking) using SPSS for windows Version 11.0. Treatment of non-detectables was handled on an individual compound basis and LOD (Hornung and Reed, 1990), half of the respective LOD for each compound was assigned to show the level for samples in which the compounds was not detected.

Varimax rotation component loading matrix and variance contributions are shown in Table 2. Five factors were extracted

Conclusions

  • Factor analysis and correlation analysis indicate that styrene, d-limonene, benzene, m-ethyltoluene, 1,2,4/1,3,5-trimethylbenzene, propylbenzene and n/tert-butylbenzene are extremely well correlated with ETS, and tobacco smoking in indoor environment caused elevated concentrations of these VOCs. However, toluene, m,p-xylene, o-xylene and ethylbenzene are not evidently correlated with ETS because there are multiple nonsmoking sources for these compounds in indoor, so care must be taken while

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the key foundation projects of Guangdong Province under grant number 2001A3040101. We are grateful to Dr. Maolin Zhang for his assistance with ETS markers test and to Dr. Li Li for her assistance with consultation and to Mr. Zhengyue Li and Mr. Tongxiu Xiang for technical assistance. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

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