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NASAL EFFECTS OF A MIXTURE OF VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS AND THEIR OZONE OXIDATION PRODUCTS.
Citation:
LAMBACH, R. J., N. FIEDLER, C. GARDNER, D. LASKIN, Z. FAN, J. ZHANG, C. J. WESCHLER, P. J. LIOY, P. OHMAN, K. KELLY-MCNEIL, H. M. KIPEN, AND R. B. DEVLIN. NASAL EFFECTS OF A MIXTURE OF VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS AND THEIR OZONE OXIDATION PRODUCTS. JOURNAL OF OCCUPATIONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL MEDICINE. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia, PA, 47(11):1182-1189, (2005).
Impact/Purpose:
To test the hypothesis that a mixture of Volatile Organic Compounds, alone or with ozone and resulting reaction products, would cause increased nasal symptoms and markers of nasal injury or inflammation
Description:
"Nonspecific-building related illness (NSBRI)," or "sick building syndrome," refers to symptomatic complaints associated with occupancy of non-industrial buildings. The diverse symptoms of NSBRI include mucous membrane (eye, nose, throat) irritation, headaches, fatigue, nausea, skin rash, and dizziness (1) (2). Volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) have been implicated as potential etiological agents of NSBRI (3). In studies of controlled exposure to mixtures of VOCs, volunteers have reported increased upper respiratory irritation and other symptoms (4) (5) (6). One of these studies also reported increased neutrophils, a marker of inflammation, in nasal lavage fluid (7). The concentrations of VOCs in these studies were lower than industrial workplace levels known to cause symptoms, but higher than levels typically found in non-industrial buildings (8).
Recently, investigators have suggested that highly irritating products of reactions that occur between indoor air contaminants may contribute to NSBRI. Terpenes, common indoor VOCs, react rapidly with low-level ozone, generated by indoor sources or infiltrating from outdoors, to form a complex mixture of irritating products that include aldehydes, carboxylic acids, free radicals, and particles (9-11) (12;13;). In an animal bioassay for respiratory irritation, terpene-ozone reaction products are significantly more irritating than their precursor compounds (14;15), but no studies of human respiratory exposure to VOC-ozone reaction products have been published.
Here we report nasal outcomes that were part of a larger indoor air quality study (16) of controlled human exposure to a mixture of 23 VOCs (total concentration 25 mg/m3) containing terpenes, with and without ozone maintained at 40 ppb. We tested the hypothesis that the mixture of VOCs, alone or with ozone and resulting reaction products, would cause increased nasal symptoms and markers of nasal injury (protein) or inflammation [polymorphonuclear cells (PMNs), interleuken-8 (IL-8), interleuken-6 (IL-6)]in nasal lavage fluid, compared to a masked air control. Our study differed from previous VOC exposure studies in that we improved the blinding of subjects to the nature of the exposure by attempting to mask the control condition with an initial exposure to the VOC mixture at an order-of-magnitude lower concentration (approximately 2.5 mg/m3).