(Richard A Lovett/ Cosmos) — We may not think of our living rooms and offices as chemical factories, but reactions occurring within them can produce a dangerous array of toxic air pollutants, scientists say.
In some cases, these chemicals are formed by the same reactions that produce urban smog, says Sasho Gligorovski, a physicist and atmospheric chemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou, China, and coauthor of a review article on the subject in the journal Science.
For example, he says, indoor environments can contain highly reactive hydroxyl (OH) radicals at levels comparable to those in outdoor air. That’s a surprise because in urban smog, hydroxyl radicals are produced by photochemical reactions involving ultraviolet radiation from the sun and nitrogen-containing pollutants from such sources as car exhaust. Finding similar levels of hydroxyls in indoor air, he says, means that enough ultraviolet is penetrating windows to produce the same reactions indoors.
And while this doesn’t mean indoor air is turning into smog, it does mean that a lot of chemical reactions are possible within it.
“The high concentration of OH radicals indoors makes the indoor environment [into] a reaction chamber,” Gligorovski says. (…)