Indoor air quality in cultural heritage buildings is one of main topics of the Department of Aerosol Chemistry and Physics. Indoor pollution can cause irreversible degradation of materials stored there. Thus, detailed information about indoor air quality is essential before control strategies could be investigated. The current study, published in a prestigious scientific journal focusing on indoor environment, Building and Environment, analyses the contribution of outdoor air to the indoor particle concentrations in archives. It represents a part of a complex long-term study performed in different types of archives, libraries, museums, churches, and depositories. The parallel studies also included investigation of the composition of indoor particulate matter, the behaviour of gaseous pollutants, modelling of indoor/outdoor relationship, deposition on indoor surfaces, the influence of visitors, and adverse effects of dust deposits.
In a period 2008-2019, the relationship between the indoor and outdoor pollution was investigated in four naturally ventilated archives located in historical buildings and situated in regions with different outdoor air quality. The results revealed that the most important source of the indoor particulate matter was the outdoor air. The data were evaluated using the steady-state solution of the mass balance equation as the indoor/outdoor ratio. The results showed that all parameters determined in archives were comparable, probably due to the similar building characteristics. Further, the typical average values of the parameters for naturally ventilated historical buildings were estimated and the long-term indoor concentrations were determined using data from the local monitoring network. The results showed that the higher level of pollution and therefore the higher degree of degradation is expected in depositories located in highly polluted regions. It corresponds with findings of the parallel study of the degradation of identical incunabula stored for more than 200 years in the archives with different outdoor air quality.
Mašková, Ludmila, Smolík, Jiří, Ondráček, Jakub, Ondráčková, Lucie, Trávníčková, Tereza, Havlica, Jaromír. Air quality in archives housed in historic buildings: Assessment of concentration of indoor particles of outdoor origin. Building and Environment. 2020, 180), 107021. ISSN 0360-1323. DOI: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.107024
Measure of the indoor air quality in different types of archives, libraries, museums, churches, and depositories.