Personal care products (PCPs) contain diverse volatile organiccompounds (VOCs) and routine use of PCPs indoors has important implicationsfor indoor air quality and human chemical exposures. This chamber studydeployed aerosol instrumentation and two online mass spectrometers to quantifyVOC emissions from the indoor use of five fragranced PCPs and examined theformation of gas-phase oxidation products and particles upon ozone-initiatedoxidation of reactive VOCs.
The tested PCPs include a perfume, a roll-ondeodorant, a body spray, a hair spray, and a hand lotion. Indoor use of thesePCPs emitted over 200 VOCs and resulted in indoor VOC mixing ratios ofseveral parts per million. The VOC emission factors for the PCPs varied from 2to 964 mg g−1. We identified strong emissions of terpenes and their derivatives,which are likely used as fragrant additives in the PCPs.
When using the PCPs in the presence of indoor ozone, these reactive VOCsunderwent oxidation reactions to form a variety of gas-phase oxidized vapors and led to rapid new particle formation (NPF) eventswith particle growth rates up to ten times higher than outdoor atmospheric NPF events. The resulting ultrafine particleconcentrations reach ∼34000 to ∼200000 cm−3 during the NPF events.
A-rapport, A2725.