Adsorption of selected volatile organic compounds on a carpet,a wall coating and a gypsum board in a test chamber.

The adsorption of vapours of different volatility and polarity on three materials widely used indoors (carpet, gypsum board, wall coating) has been investigated in small test chambers, in order to study methodological aspects and to estimate the importance of the phenomenon for human exposure assessments. The output of the models used, with rate constants describing two different sinks, is discussed. The experiments show that: a) adsorption seems to occur to at least two different sinks with different rate constants in the same material; b) generally adsorption increases with the boiling point of the compounds, but it depends also on other physicochemical properties, such as the chemical functionality, as well as on the sorbent material: e.g. the two alkanes n-decane and n-dodecane show a higher k/ k4 ratio on carpet than on gypsum board, whereas the opposite is observed for the two alcohols 2-butoxyethanol and 2-ethylhexanol.