Influence of Indoor Air Filtration Strategies on Occupant Health Indicators

This study will test two common types of central air handling unit filtration technologies, high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters and electrostatic precipitators (ESPs), to evaluate the impacts of these technologies on personal exposure to air pollutants and the associated cardiovascular and respiratory health outcomes. HEPA filters remove a high percentage of the particulate matter in the air, as do ESPs, but ESPs also generate ozone, which may have its own detrimental health effects. These air purification technologies will be placed in different combinations with a coarse pre-filter to protect the air exchange machinery (combinations: pre-filter only, pre-filter + HEPA, and pre-filter + HEPA + ESP) in both the residences and offices of study participants living on a factory campus in Changsha, Hunan Province, China. Large dormitories and office buildings with central air handling units are common in China and around the world, and so adding air purification into the central ducts represents a practical strategy to reducing personal exposure to air pollution and related health outcomes. The Changsha area commonly suffers from high air pollution, and the dormitories and offices on this workspace are already outfitted with both HEPA filters and ESPs. Therefore, testing these technologies in this environment presents a natural experimental condition to test the benefits of air purification. The study investigators hypothesize that both the pre-filter + HEPA and pre-filter + HEPA + ESP conditions will reduce particulate matter exposure and reduce biological markers of cardiovascular and respiratory disease compared to the pre-filter alone, but that the ESP will generate enough ozone to lead to lower health benefits than HEPA+pre-filter condition.