Textbook of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine: Indoor Air Pollution and Respiratory Health

Indoor environments contribute significantly to total human exposure to air pollutants. Exposures occur in places where people spend time and globally, people spend the majority of their time indoors. The same quantity of a pollutant causes more exposure when, released indoors than outdoors. For some pollutants,indoor exposure probably dominates the global human exposure. Approximate estimates indicate that about 85% of all global Particulate Matter (PM) pollution occurs indoors.1 Some pollutants may be 2-5 fold more concentrated inside, than outside the buildings; furthermore, indoor pollutants may have an important biological impact even at low concentrations over long exposure periods.