This image shows an apartment’s view towards Lake Ontario, and the twelve lane Gardiner Expressway and Lakeshore Boulevard in Toronto, Canada, alongside the TVOC reading for my apartment during the month of January 2020, when I left an air monitoring device in my bedroom. The average daily TVOC levels recorded were between 0.8-1.2ppm, which represents a high moderate to high level of exposure. The German Federal Environmental Agency describes levels above 0.66 for longer than a month as “poor” with “major objections” and “intensified ventilation and airing necessary.”
Yet this room has been ventilated, with the window open as far as it can go ~30cm X 30 cm, while I, the occupant, was home. Why would the level continue to be so high, even with the window open? The satellite map shows that the highway is 70metres (230 feet) away. The apartment building is an older, over hundred year old building, and so the walls and ceilings between apartments are not well sealed. I have removed all cleaners and chemicals from the apartment, and all furniture and floors are made of wood, so there are no sources of off-gassing within. There is, instead, the possibility that consistent second hand smoke from a resident from across the hallway, and or the VOCs from cooking and air fresheners used by occupants above and below, consistently combine with toxicants released by highway and train traffic which enters the apartment to create other reactions. The low or absent ventilation of adjacent apartments thus influences the TVOC level of my apartment, despite my own ventilation.
This image shows an apartment’s view towards Lake Ontario, and the twelve lane Gardiner Expressway and Lakeshore Boulevard in Toronto, Canada, alongside the TVOC reading for my apartment during the month of January 2020, when I left an air monitoring device in my bedroom. The average daily TVOC levels recorded were between 0.8-1.2ppm, which represents a high moderate to high level of exposure. The German Federal Environmental Agency describes levels above 0.66 for longer than a month as “poor” with “major objections” and “intensified ventilation and airing necessary.”
Yet this room has been ventilated, with the window open as far as it can go ~30cm X 30 cm, while I, the occupant, was home. Why would the level continue to be so high, even with the window open? The satellite map shows that the highway is 70metres (230 feet) away. The apartment building is an older, over hundred year old building, and so the walls and ceilings between apartments are not well sealed. I have removed all cleaners and chemicals from the apartment, and all furniture and floors are made of wood, so there are no sources of off-gassing within. There is, instead, the possibility that consistent second hand smoke from a resident from across the hallway, and or the VOCs from cooking and air fresheners used by occupants above and below, consistently combine with toxicants released by highway and train traffic which enters the apartment to create other reactions. The low or absent ventilation of adjacent apartments thus influences the TVOC level of my apartment, despite my own ventilation.