Indoor-Outdoor Volatile Organic Compounds in Urban and Industrial Area

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are of concern both as indoor and outdoor air pollutants for their potential adverse impact on health of people who are exposed and ability to create photo-chemical smog under certain conditions. Although VOCs are expected to be an important environmental and health risk factor but there are limited studies on the outdoor and indoor air levels of VOCs in different environments such as industrial and urban areas of Bangladesh. Therefore, the presence and concentration levels of VOCs were investigated for urban (Mirpur) and industrial (Tejgaon) areas of Dhaka city, Bangladesh in this study. Reasonable comparison is challenging in the sense that the comparison is reasonable when comparison has done on the same type sampling environment, same sampling methods has used, there were same targets compounds and same sample sample size. A comparison at country level is discussed between this study and other studies in different cities from less developed region on BTEX and benzene level on urban environment. This study brought forward new data on VOCs but further studies concerning more sites and seasonal variations are recommend.