Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE OF GAZI UNIVERSITY, cilt.33, sa.4, ss.1531-1541, 2018 (SCI-Expanded)
PAHs are a group of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and they can be determined in indoor and outdoor environment and the studies to determine these pollutants are increasing day by day. The reason for this the negative effect of POPs on the environment especially for human health is revealed by different studies. In the current study, PAHs were determined by passive sampling method from indoor (kitchen and living room) air samples of 12 houses and outdoor air samples of 6 houses. Sampling was conducted in two seasons. The sampling took place in the summer season (between 18.07.2014 and 01.09.2014) when windows were generally open and in the autumn season (between 18.10.2014 and 01.12.2014) when windows were kept mostly closed. Average total PAH concentrations in the summer were 20.3+17.9 ng/m(3) and 22.,9 +/- 28.0 ng/m(3) in living room and kitchen, respectively, whereas average total PAH concentrations for living room and kitchen in the autumn were 27.2+20.0 ng/m(3) and 21.7+10.5 ng/m(3), respectively. Ambient air PAH concentrations in summer and autumn were 10.2+6.0 ng/m(3) and 20.5+11.0 ng/m(3), respectively. Outdoor ambient air was a particular contamination source when the weather got colder and heating systems were in use. Diagnostic ratios of PAHs were calculated for living room, kitchen and outdoor ambient air and the ratio of lower molecular weight PAHs to higher molecular weight PAHs was calculated to be higher than one. This result indicates that the source of PAHs was mostly petrogenic or originated from vehicles/traffic.