Aerosols generated from cooking make up a significant portion of particles indoors, as well as in outdoor urban environments. Indoor air quality is also impacted by many other complex aerosol sources, including home heating. It is important to note that in colder climates, indoor air quality is understudied but is crucial to understand as humans in such places spend a significant amount of their time indoors. Little is known about the mixing state of indoor cooking and home heating particles and their potential for internal mixing due to gas-particle partitioning of semi-volatile compounds indoors. In this work, we explore the indoor aerosol population and its mixing state using single-particle mass spectrometry. During the Alaskan Layered Pollution and Chemical Analysis (ALPACA) field campaign in Fairbanks, Alaska conducted from January to February 2022, indoor air quality was investigated through detailed chemical characterization of indoor aerosols. Using an aerosol time-of-flight mass spectrometer (ATOFMS), the positive and negative ion mass spectra of individual aerosol particles were obtained simultaneously, providing their real-time size and chemical composition. This provides insights into the distribution of various chemical species across the aerosol population. Additionally, a scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS) and an aerodynamic particle sizer (APS) measured aerosol size distributions. The chemical composition of indoor aerosols, particularly those resulting from indoor cooking and pellet stove burns, were explored in this work. From this data, we will better be able to understand the sources, chemical composition, and mixing states of individual indoor aerosols.

Chemical composition of individual aerosols generated from indoor cooking and home heating

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