School Air Quality: Pollutants, Monitoring and Toxicity

In recent years the use of synthetic materials in building and furnishing, the adoption of new lifestyles, the extensive use of products for environmental cleaning and personal hygiene have contributed to the deterioration of the indoor air quality (IAQ) and introduced new sources of risk to humans. Indoor environments include home work places such as offices, public buildings such as hospitals, schools, kindergartens, sports halls, libraries, restaurants and bars, theatres and cinemas and finally cabins of vehicles. Indoor environments in schools have been of particular public concern. According to recent studies, children aged between 3 and 14 spend 90 % of the day indoors both in winter and summer. Adverse environmental effects on the learning and performance of students in schools could have both immediate and lifelong consequences, for the students and for society. In fact, children have greater susceptibility to some environmental pollutants than adults, because they breathe higher volumes of air relative to their body weights and their tissues and organs are actively growing. This review describes methods for the assessment of indoor air quality in schools. To this aim, monitoring strategies for sampling and measurement of indoor air pollutants will be discussed. The paper’s goal involves four major points: (1) characteristics of indoor environments, chemical pollutants and their sources within school; (2) monitoring strategies; (3) sampling and analysis techniques; and (4) an overview of findings from scientific literature. Finally, we summarizes available knowledge about IAQ in schools highlighting key gaps and suggesting priority topics and strategies for research. Moreover, it provides useful tools to support the stakeholder for development of strategies of prevention and mitigation in school environments in order to improve the indoor air quality.