The use of air freshener in the premises of UniMAP and their potential health effect on human

Abstract

A wide range of fragranced consumer products such as air fresheners, laundry supplies, personal care products, and cleaners are widely used in homes, businesses, institutions, and public places containing chemicals that fit the definition of hazardous or toxic. Of all the products in the indoor area, clean-smelling air fresheners seem to pose adverse health risk since humans spent most of their time in indoor environment. Data on levels of hazardous chemicals being released by the air freshener in developing countries, including Malaysia, are lacking. The present work deals with the estimation of target three types of chemicals 3 different location take as indoor area and 1 location as outdoor area where all the sampling works are conducted at School of Environmental Engineering. Toxic Gas Probe (TG-502) was used to measured the exposure level of naphthalene, chlorobenzene and o-dichlorobenzene (oDCB). The monitoring was carried out during working hours in the premises with no specific time were defined, during January 2011 to Mac 2011. In this study, the concentration of naphthalene, chlorobenzene and oDCB in office, room and toilet ranging between 30 μg/m³ to 163 μg/m³, 65 μg/m³ to 318 μg/m³, 66 μg/m³ to 241 μg/m³ respectively. On the other hand, the outdoor concentration for naphthalene, chlorobenzene and oDCB ranging between 10 μg/m³ to 52 μg/m³, 11 μg/m³ to 29 μg/m³, 11 μg/m³ to 19 μg/m³ respectively. This result indicated that the source of pollutants comes from inside of building particularly in area consist of air freshener. The health risk assessment using USEPA technique suggested that the workers are at high risk of having adverse health effect associated with the exposure level.