Volatile Organic Compounds in Alberta, Canada Residences—Evidence from Community Surveys
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The impact of the built environment on public health is complex, involving several determinants of health including indoor air quality. People who spend the most time indoors can be exposed to indoor air pollutants for long periods of time. These are often the same people who are most susceptible to adverse effects if exposures are high enough (young children, elderly, and chronically ill, especially those suffering from respiratory diseases). An analysis of data on selected indoor volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from community studies in Alberta, Canada was undertaken. Measures of typical (central tendency) and high end (upper limit) indoor concentrations were estimated from seven studies in Alberta. Best estimates of central tendency indoor concentrations for 12 VOCs—benzene, ethylbenzene, o-xylene, 3-methylhexane, heptane, octane, nonane, decane, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, carbon tetrachloride, tetrachloroethylene, and 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene—were less than 5 μg/m3. Best estimates of central tendency indoor concentrations for three VOCs—toluene, m/p-xylene, and limonene—were greater than 5 μg/m3. In the case of best estimates of upper limit indoor concentrations—benzene, ethylbenzene, o-xylene, hexane, 3-methylhexane, heptane, octane, nonane, carbon tetrachloride, and tetrachloroethylene had upper limit concentrations less than 15 μg/m3. Best estimates of upper limit indoor concentrations for toluene, m/p xylene, decane, limonene, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, and 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene were greater than 15 μg/m3. Upper limit concentrations observed inside Alberta residences were about 4 to 10 times higher than typical concentrations for most of the VOCs observed. Upper limit indoor concentrations for carbon tetrachloride and benzene in Alberta are similar to or greater than levels judged by US EPA to imply a concern for potential cancer effects. This indicates that some homes in Alberta can have levels of carbon tetrachloride and benzene that may be of concern from a public health point-of-view.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".