Air pollution/working activity correlation: a case study in a dental hospital

Abstract

The paper deals with a multidimensional approach demonstrating a direct link between the entity of ongoing dentistry activity (number and kind of interventions) and specific pollution components. Simultaneously indoor/outdoor air concentrations of a set of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and activity variables, describing the amount and nature of ongoing dentistry activities, were monitored over a year at a dental hospital located in an urban area. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to single out mutually orthogonal pollution components which were then correlated to “pathology” factors arising from the analysis of dentistry activity indexes. The use of a multidimensional perspective allowed us to obtain a statistically significant model of the link between level of pollution and dentistry activity. In particular, the correlation approach linking pollution results to pathological variables allows us to establish a causative link even in the presence of sub-threshold concentrations of pollutants.

Keywords:

• dental setting
• dentistry activity
• pathology
• volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
• air pollution

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge Dr Alessandro Giuliani of Istituto Superiore di Sanità for his useful comments on this work.