Citation:

Schumacher, B., JohnH Zimmerman, C. Lutes, R. Truesdale, AND C. Holton. Key Design Elements of Building Pressure Cycling for Evaluating Vapor Intrusion—A Literature Review. Groundwater Monitoring & Remediation. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Hoboken, NJ, 39(1):66-72, (2019). https://doi.org/10.1111/gwmr.12310

Impact/Purpose:

Vapor intrusion has been identified as an important human exposure pathway and people may come into contact with hazardous vapors while performing their day-to-day indoor activities. he challenge of this VI effort was to assess the effectiveness of mitigation systems to reduce or eliminate VI over a wide area (i.e., neighborhood instead of individual home) while at the same time, remove the source of the contamination. A soil vapor extraction (SVE) system was installed and operated at a Superfund site in California. Soil gas and indoor air samples were collected at various times throughout the year from homes and buildings surrounding the site to determine the presence or absence of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The results of our research will be used to support of updating Regional guidance documents and by OLEM in their initial and updated vapor intrusion guidance documents. Remedial Project Managers are anticipated to use our research results in selecting remedial alternatives at various Superfund sites as well as methods for sampling soil gas and indoor air VOC concentrations.

Description:

Building pressure cycling (BPC) is becoming an increasingly important tool for studying vapor intrusion. BPC has been used to distinguish subslab and indoor sources of vapor intrusion as well as to define reasonable worst case volatile organic compound mass discharge into a structure. Analyses have been performed both semi‐quantitatively with concentration trends and quantitatively with more rigorous flux calculation and source attribution methods. This paper reviews and compares the protocols and outcomes from multiple published applications of this technology to define the key variables that control performance. Common lessons learned are identified, including those that help define the range of building size and type to which BPC is applicable. Differences in test protocols are discussed, recognizing that the complexity of the test protocol required depends on the particular objectives of each project. Research gaps are identified and tabulated for future validation studies and applications.

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