ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Indoor Environment
This article is part of the Research TopicIndoor Air Quality: Monitoring, Pollutants, and Remedial StrategiesView all 9 articles
Application of diffusive uptake rates of selected Volatile Organic Compounds on tubes for investigation of air exchange rate in dwellings
Provisionally accepted
- 1National Radiation Protection Institute (NRPI), Prague, Czechia
- 2Ceske vysoke uceni technicke v Praze Fakulta jaderna a fyzikalne inzenyrska, Prague, Czechia
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The specific geological bedrock in the Czech Republic causes one of the highest levels of radon exposure in the world. The current Czech National Action Plan, based on the WHO 2005 directive on the reduction of radon exposure in workplaces and homes, covers the monitoring of the non-exceedance of the reference level of 300 Bq m-3 in relevant buildings, which includes the determination of the average air exchange rate (AER). The dual tracer source – sorbent tube system was designed to determine the average AER over the measurement period ranging from few days up to one month. This system aims to create a cost-effective method to be applied in houses on a national level. The AER assessment and simultaneous continuous radon gas measurements are necessary to estimate the behavior of radon in buildings. The system based on the use of multiple tracer gases also allows estimation of inter-compartment airflows between individual floors of measured multi-story buildings. Based on the known weight difference of the container, filled with suitable volatile organic compound (VOC), amount of the tracer adsorbed on a tube determined by a gas chromatography system, temperature, time exposure in a dwelling and uptake rate for specific sorbent and VOC tracer, the average AER in a building is calculated. The total uncertainties of AER measured in field typically ranged around 15 % and the inter-compartment airflows, which were typically of the order of units of m3 h-1, ranged from 30 to 60 % with a coverage factor of 𝑘= 1.
Keywords: Air exchange rate, Dwellings, gas chromatography, Radon exposure, Uptake rate, Volatile Organic Compounds
Received: 16 Jul 2025; Accepted: 01 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hupka, Jílek, Kotík and Lenk. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ivan Hupka
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