Cigarette induced PM2.5 in hotel rooms: An assessment of the effectiveness of management's mitigating measures

Many research evidence shows that the pollutants, especially the fine particulate matter (PM2.5), related to cigarette smoking, are harmful to the human body. Given that a hotel room is an almost air-tight setting and not very spacious, knowledge about the concentrations of PM2.5 created by cigarette smoking and the subsequent mitigation measures taken appears to be important in hotel management practice. Thus, field measurements were undertaken in a hotel room to ascertain the cigarette burning and smoking induced pollutant concentrations during the following ON and OFF conditions: with ventilation, with a window open, and using a specific air purifier designed to mitigate the effects of cigarette smoking. The investigation found that cigarette burning and smoking induced PM2.5 concentrations may reach 586 μg/m3 and 1368 μg/m3 on average when ventilation is OFF, respectively. The operation of ventilation may reduce the concentration to about 100 μg/m3. The effectiveness of opening a window as an alleviating measure greatly depends on outdoor PM2.5 concentrations; the observed threshold reference is 100 μg/m3. The tested air purifier works well for cigarette smoking, but not for cigarette burning. Implications of these results on management's mitigation measures are further discussed in this paper.