PM2.5 in Indoor Air of a Bakery: Chemical Characterization and Size Distribution

In current literature, studies on indoor air quality mostly concern environments such ashospitals, schools and homes, and less so on spaces producing food, such as bakeries. However,small- and medium-sized bakeries are typical and very common food production spaces, mostly inSouthern Italy. Considering this, the present study investigated size trends of the aerosol particlesduring bakery working activities and the indoor particulate matter PM2.5 chemical speciation at thesame time, in order to characterize the aerosol particulate matter emissions. In particular, indoor airmonitoring was performed using a silent sequential sampler and an optical particle counter monitorduring 7-19 April 2013. For each daily sampling, four PM2.5 samples were collected. In each sample,OC (organic carbon), EC (elemental carbon), LG (levoglucosan) Cl- (chloride), NO2- (nitrite), NO3-(nitrate), SO42- (sulfate), C2O42- (oxalate), Na+ (sodium), NH4+ (ammonium), K+ (potassium), Mg2+(magnesium) and Ca2+ (calcium) concentrations were determined. The main sources of particleswere wood burning, the cleaning of ovens (ash removal) and the baking of bread. While levoglucosan was associated with the source wood burning, potassium in this case can be considered as a markerof the contribution of the bakery activities. This work represents the second part of indoor researchactivities performed in the bakery. The first part was published in Ielpo et al. (2018).