AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
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Formation of Isocyanic Acid from the Heterogeneous Ozonolysis of Tobacco Smoke Deposited onto Indoor Surfaces
CHRISTOPHER LIM, Jonathan Abbatt, University of Toronto, Canada
Abstract Number: 182 Working Group: The Air We Breathe: Indoor Aerosol Sources and Chemistry
Abstract Indoor air pollution can lead to significant exposures to toxic compounds (e.g., harmful gases and particulate matter), especially for populations who spend a majority of their time indoors. Despite the importance of indoor air, chemical transformations indoors are relatively understudied compared to those that occur outdoors. One defining feature of the indoor environment is the large amount of surface area available (typically orders of magnitude higher than the outdoors) for semivolatile compounds to deposit onto. In addition to dermal exposure to occupants, compounds deposited onto surfaces can continue to react through heterogeneous reactions with atmospheric oxidants over long timescales (days to weeks) since they are less subject to removal by building air exchange. In this work we focus on the ozonolysis of tobacco smoke, an important source of indoor air pollution, deposited onto a variety of indoor surface proxies and use an acetate ion time-of-flight chemical ionization mass spectrometer (CIMS) to detect gas-phase products volatilized from the surface. Over a wide range of environmental conditions, isocyanic acid (HNCO) is detected as a major product, showing the capability of surface reactions to be an additional source of exposure to toxic compounds indoors.