Ebook Principles of Chemical Nomenclature: A guide to IUPAC recommendations

Concentrations of VOCs generated indoors may be presumed to decrease proportionally in response to increases in house ventilation. This has been documented in a new, unoccupied house for those VOCs with the highest vapor pressures (Hodgson et al., 2000). However, within chemical classes, the effectiveness of ventilation for reducing concentrations generally decreases with decreasing volatility (ibid.). The reduced effectiveness of ventilation for controlling the concentrations of less volatile compounds likely is due to sink effects in which the sorption of VOCs on interior surfaces and their diffusion into some materials is reversed when bulk air concentrations start...