Tolis, EI; Panaras, G; Douklias, E; Ouranos, N; Bartzis, JG
Air quality of outdoor and indoor places is a continuing issue of major concern to scientists, local authorities and general population. Most of studies related to indoor air involve homes and workplace/school environments, but little attention is given to other places that people spend their time, like sport halls and aquatic centers, where many people are doing sports or watch athletic events. Within this context, in this study a mechanical ventilated medium scale indoor athletic centre (total capacity of 3,000 seats) of the city of Kozani, Greece, was chosen for investigating the air quality. For this reason, an extensive monitoring campaign took place during autumn period, including measurements of PM2.5, VOC, NO2, 03 for the indoor and outdoor area. The measurements for PM2.5 and VOC were performed simultaneously indoors and outdoors, in order to find potential, common or not, indoor sources of these two pollutants. In addition, chemical analysis was performed for the collected PM2.5 concerning ionic species and 17 metals (Be, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Se, Sb, Ba, Tl, Pb, Th, U and Fe). Results show that the PM2.5 concentration is slightly higher outdoors than indoors with values of 13.98 and 11.96 mu g/m(3) respectively. The 110 ratio was always under 1, indicating that the outdoor concentrations influence the indoor ones. On the other hand, the diurnal variation of VOCs concentration reveals increased levels during "event" hours, in comparison to "non-event" hours, for the indoor and outdoor area as well.