• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.78-85
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• 2009

In this study, the hazard rate of the indoor environment of Children's Educational Facilities in Seoul was conducted, in order to determine how the indoor environments of these facilities, where infants and children spend the most time of their away from home day, can effect their health. The way of measurement and analysis were done according to the Indoor Air Quality Standard Method, and the Risk Assessment was accomplished with several significant ways - Hazard Identification, Exposure Assessment, Dose-response Assessment, Risk Characterization, which are deighed by National Research Council (NRC). On each exposure factors, documentary and questionary research such as Epidemiological study and Toxicological study were conducted. The result of the CTE (Central tendency exposure) of Formaldehyde and Benzene by Monte-Carlo simulation was $6.79{\times}10^{-6}$, $2.50{\times}10^{-7}$ which in the case of Formaldehyde exceeded the permitted standard ($10^{-6}$) of the US EPA. The RME(Reasonable maximum exposure) was $7.31{\times}10^{-5}$, $2.65{\times}10^{-6}$ which did not exceed $10^{-4}$, the maximum permitted standards in the US EPA.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.300-310
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• 2012

Objectives: Indoor air quality problems in public spaces have recently become a very important issue in South Korea, because many spend a long time every day indoors. In this study, an extensive literature review was performed on the subject of suspended bacteria and fungi in public facilities. The objective of this study was to evaluate the extent and types of suspended bacteria and fungi in indoor air in South Korea. This study will provide direction to the research in the field of indoor air. Methods: Article reviews was conducted using a search engine and the following keywords; 'bacteria', 'total suspended bacteria', 'fungi' and 'indoor air' from published articles since 2000. Results: Most of the places of measurement were schools, kindergartens, childcare centers and general hospitals. The highest concentrations of total suspended bacteria and fungi were found in schools and kindergartens. Some public facilities exceeded the standard of 800 CFU/$m^3$. There were few studies on other suspended bacteria: Gram Negative Bacteria, Staphylococcus and Klebsiella pneumoniae. Conclusions: It appears that more studies with intensive controls are needed. It was found that schools and kindergartens were most susceptible to microbial indoor air pollution. These results may be able to suggest an indoor standard for suspended bacteria and fungi in South Korea.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.92-97
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• 2004

Three methods for VOCs emissions control in indoor air are reduction at the source, ventilation between indoor and outdoor, and removal. The best alternative should be to replace highly emitting sources with sources having low emissions, but the pertinent information on VOCs is not always available from manufactures. Other ways of improving indoor air quality are needed. It is to increase the outside fresh-air flow to dilute the pollutants, but this method would generally provide only a dilution effect without destruction in residence. An ideal alternative to existing technologies would be a chemical oxidation process able to treat large volumes of slightly contaminated air at normal temperature without additional oxidant such as ozone generator and ion generator. Photocatalytic oxidation(PCO) represents such a process. It is characterized by a surface reaction assisted by light radiation inducing the formation of superoxide, hydroperoxide anions, or hydroxyl radicals, which are powerful oxidants. In comparison with other VOCs removal methods, PCO offers several advantages. The purpose of this study was to explore the possibilities for photocatalytic purification of slightly contaminated indoor air by using visible light such as flurescent visible light(FVL). In this study, a PCO of relatively concentrated benzene using common FVL lamps was investigated as batch type and total volatile organic compounds(TVOCs) using a common FVL lamp and penetrated sun light over window. The results of this study shown the possibility of TiO$_2$ photocatalyst application in the area of indoor air quality control.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.591-601
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• 2013

In modern society, we are living indoor at 80 - 90 % or more of the day, therefore most people are exposed to unconscious indoor air pollutants by various causes. When mother and infant, whose level of immunity are weak, are exposed to polluted indoor air, respiratory diseases and atopy can occur by the growth of bacteria. Therefore, appropriate indoor air quality management is important especially at nursery, elementary school and postpartum clinic etc. In this study, we compared the characteristics of the indoor air qualities of primary school facilities and infant facilities. In this study, seasonal effects were investigated. Also the effects of individual activity area were studied for indoor air quality. During summer season(May-August), the air qualities of each 16 elementary school and nursery school were investigated. During winter season(October-december), the air qualities of each 10 elementary school and nursery school were investigated. As a result, during winter season in 10 of 16 nursery school, $CO_2$ concentration exceeded regulation level of 1000 ppm. This resulted from the operation of heating system and poor ventilation. Also the air quality of all parameters during winter season were worse than during summer, maybe due to poor ventilation. Except HCHO, the concentrations of other parameters were higher in nursery school. This seems to result from relatively low individual activity area of nursery school than elementary school. From this research, more strong regulation for ventilation and installation of air purifier should be implemented.

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Structure & Construction
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• v.35 no.10
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• pp.217-223
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to measure the indoor air quality of small-scale apartments and then proposed a method to improve the indoor air quality of the small-scale apartments by comparing with the result of indoor air quality in the Clean-Healthy House. In case of formaldehyde, a highly volatile organic compound, the concentrations of indoor measured both in small-scale apartments and the Clean Healthy houses did not exceed- the guideline of Korea. The guideline of Korea for acetaldehyde was not available, so the guidelines of Japan and the World Health Organization were used to measure the concentration of acetaldehyde. The study results demonstrated that three out of seven small-scale apartments investigated exceeded the guideline of Japan; and the preliminary research on the Clean-Health Houses was low at about 30-60% of the guideline of Japan. The result of the VOCs measurement showed that toluene, ethylbenzene, and styrene in some small-scale apartments exceeded the guideline of Korea. However, the Clean-Healthy Houses in the previous studies did not exceed the guideline of Korea with regard to all the pollutants. Therefore, this study suggests the application of the construction standards of the Clean-Healthy house in order to improve the indoor air quality of small-scale apartments. In addition, the current study anticipates that improvement of the indoor air quality in the residential environments should be universally applied, not limited to the type and size of the residence.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.102-110
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• 2010

Personal exposure relies on characteristics of time activity patterns of the population of concern as human activities impact the timing, location, and level of personal exposure. The information about time spent in microenvironments plays a critical role for personal exposure to air pollutants. It is useful to determine the precise times of the day that the subjects are in certain locations or engaging in specific activities because exposure to some air pollutants can depend on temporal trends. This study investigated time activity pattern for workers of Korean population over 19 years old with 8,778 workers in weekday. The residential indoor times were 12 hours. Time activity was different by gender and the mean times stayed at home in weekday were 12.9 hours in female and 11.42 hours in male, respectively. The major factors on residential indoor time and workplace time were age, monthly income, occupation and industry type, work position, education, and gender. Considering shorter than those in other countries, Korean workers spent less time at home after the working hours. Determinants of time activity pattern need to be taken into account in exposure assessment, epidemiological analyses, exposure simulations, as well as in the development of preventive strategies. Since there are substantial difference of Korean worker activity pattern, this information can be critical for exposure assessment in Korea.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.1309-1314
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• 2011

People spend approximately 80 ~ 90 % of their time in various kinds of indoor spaces. And, in metropolitan area, most people spend more than 1 hour in public transportation everyday. For this reason, people's interest in the indoor air quality is drastically increasing. Among various indoor air pollutants, $CO_2$ is one of the most severe environmental concerns. Ventilation is commonly used to keep low $CO_2$ concentration in the passenger cabin. However, ventilation may worse the indoor air quality problem in case of subway because the tunnel is seriously polluted by particulate matters. In this study, an alternative way to remove $CO_2$ was suggested. The adsorption of $CO_2$ by $CO_2$ adsorbent was studied. Zeolite modified with base was prepared, and $CO_2$ removal performance was tested in $4m^3$ and $24m^3$ environmental chambers. It was found that $CO_2$ adsorbent could effectively remove $CO_2$ in the chambers.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.12 no.12
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• pp.1235-1243
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• 2003

Under controlled conditions in an environmental chamber, 24 experiments were performed to compare the ability of a Variable-Air-Volume/Bypass Filtration System(VAV/BPFS) to remove indoor pollutants and to conserve energy with the ability of conventional Variable Air Volume(VAV) system. The specific conclusions of this paper were; first, the VAV/BPFS was more efficient than the VAV system in removing particulate matter, TVOC, and target VOCs. The total effective removal rate of PM for the VAV/BPFS was two times as high as that of the VAV system. The total effective removal rate of TVOC for the VAV/BPFS was 20 percent higher than that of the VAV system. Also each target VOC concentration was reduced by using the VAV/BPFS. Second, clean air delivery rate was increased by using VAV/BPFS due to additional filtration rate. Otherwise, the VAV/BPFS decreased outdoor supply air rate above 25 percent relative to the rate of VAV system. Third, total energy consumption by the VAV/BPFS was lower than that of the VAV system during the period with indoor thermal load, occupied time. The energy saving of the VAV/BPFS ranged from 11 to 16 percent. The VAV/BPFS improves indoor air quality more efficiently than the VAV system, and it reduced energy consumption. Retrofitting the VAV system with the VAV/BPFS was easy The use of VAV/BPFS is, therefore, recommended far buildings with VAV system as well as for buildings at designing stage.

• KIEAE Journal
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.115-122
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• 2016

Purpose: The study is to measure indoor air pollutants concentration of existing housing and to analyze the causes and assess in accordance with the government's criteria. The research result could be used as data for public health through indoor air quality management of existing housing and more as a reference for new housing. Method: It was investigated 24 middle class housings of metropolitan area in summer which have been built for the past 30 years. Concentration of HCHO, TVOC was investigated in living room at morning and night and concentration of $CO_2$ was investigated in living room and master bedroom at morning and night. SKT100-X5 was used for concentration of HCHO, TVOC and ZGm053UK for concentration of $CO_2$. Result: Average concentration of TVOC was 1.31 times more than that of HCHO and standard deviation of that was 1.73 times higher. Average concentration of $CO_2$ was almost nearly close to 1,000ppm being criteria of the Ministry of Environment.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.183-192
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• 2002

Indoor air quality is affected by source strength of pollutants, ventilation rate, decay rate, outdoor level and so on. Although technologies exist to measure these factors directly, direct measurements of all factors are impractical in most field studies. The purpose of this study was to develop an alternative methods to estimate these factors by multiple measurements. Daily indoor and outdoor NO$_2$concentrations for 21 days in 20 houses in summer and winter, Seoul. Using a mass balance model and linear regression analysis, penetration factor (ventilation divided by sum of air exchange rate and deposition constant) and source strength factor(emission rate divided by sum of air exchange rate and deposition constant) were calculated. Subsequently, the ventilation and source strength were estimated. During sampling period, geometric mean of natural ventilation was estimated to be 1.10$\pm$1.53 ACH, assuming a residential NO$_2$decay rate of 0.8 hr$^{-1}$ in summer. In winter, natural ventilation was 0.75$\pm$1.31 ACH. And mean source strengths in summer and winter were 14.8ppb/hr and 22.4ppb/hr, respectively. Although the method showed similar finding previous studies, the study did not measure ACH or the source strength of the house directly. As validation of natural ventilations, infiltrations were measured with $CO_2$tracer gas in 18 houses. Relationship between ventilation and infiltration was statistically correlated (Pearson r=0.63, p=0.02).