Environmental Science and Engineering Seminar

In the United States, as well as in most of the developed world, people spend about 90% of their time in indoor environments. Although many research efforts have focused on assessing the presence and quantity of chemical air pollutants that affect the indoor air quality, few comprehensive studies have attempted a deeper exploration into how indoor air chemical compounds may interact and transform throughout a normal day of activities. The HOMEChem (House Observations of Microbial and Environmental Chemistry) study was a month-long collaborative investigation into the chemistry of indoor environments that took place in the summer of 2018 at the University of Texas at Austin's test house. In this talk, Dr. Marina Vance will provide an overview of indoor air quality and some common indoor sources of potentially harmful pollutants. This presentation will then focus on some results from the HOMEChem study and additional follow-up studies in real residential environments.