All posts in December 2023

The amount of water on a Teflon surface is roughly three times larger at 70% RH compared to 50% RH, 504 apparently influencing the uptake and subsequent release of HONO from that surface. While exposed Teflon surfaces are rare indoors, carpets and upholstery are commonly treated with perfluorocarbon surfactants. Absent the influences of oxidative aging…

This feature likely reduces the influence of amine chemistry indoors. For example, trimethylamine, methylamine, triethylamine, diethylamine, ethylamine, and ethanolamine each react with nitric acid to form aminium nitrate particles, and the dissociation constants of diethyl- and triethylammonium nitrate were found to be similar to that of ammonium nitrate. Since the indoor concentration of NH3 tends…

Prominently featured constituents are the unsaturated fatty acids and dicarboxylic acids. We’ve already summarized the few instances in which organic acids have been directly measured indoors in relation to cooking as an emission source. Here, we highlight some studies that have assessed emission factors of organic acids associated with cooking. Because the cooking activities were…

A more recent study suggested that garbage burning “is the main global source of HCl.”Garbage often contains polyvinyl chloride, which emits HCl when burned. The presence of HCl in outdoor air means that ventilation contributes HCl to indoor environments. Indoor HCl also can be generated, in principle, by unvented indoor combustion processes. For example, there…

The geometric mean concentrations were, respectively, 157 nmol/m3 indoors and 139 nmol/m3 outdoors . In the Connecticut and Virginia homes sampled by Leaderer et al., the average fine-particle ammonium concentrations in the summer were slightly smaller for air-conditioned homes, 78 nmol/m3 compared to homes without air conditioning, 97 nmol/m3 , possibly due to lower air-exchange…

The toilet and two traps together hold ~ 6.5 L of water, but only a fraction of this water is likely equilibrated with room air. The shower surfaces are periodically wetted, typically once or twice per day. The sink basins are also wetted periodically and more frequently than the shower stall surfaces. Fabrics associated with…

In the 1999 to 2001 Center for the Health and Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas , a longitudinal birth cohort study of families in a largely agricultural area, the median level of the pregnant adult women in an agricultural community was below the LOD of 0.1 ug/g creatinine . The 2007 to 2009…

The current study found that a HIV+ status was associated with membership in the decreaser, increaser and chronic high marijuana trajectory groups, a finding that suggests that overall HIV+ MSM in the MACS were more likely to use marijuana as compared to HIV− MSM. This finding is consistent with a number of studies reporting higher rates of…

A similar pattern was demonstrated in a clinically relevant model of pneumococcal pneumonia after antibiotic treatment,and other animal models have also shown that cigarette smoke increases alveolar epithelial-capillary permeability and susceptibility to lung injury.The relationship between cigarette smoking and COVID-19, which in 2020 was the leading cause of ARDS in the United States,is unclear. There…

To assess the prevalence of depressive symptomatology or significant distress, we administered the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale .We used a standard threshold score of 16 or more to categorize depressive symptomatology or significant distress.We described sample characteristics and reported smoking and quitting behaviors from the enrollment interview using means for continuous variables and…