Evaluation of Nanoparticles Emitted from Printers in a Clean Chamber, a Copy Center and Office Rooms: Health Risks of Indoor Air Quality.

Indoor air quality has great impact on the human health. An increasing number of studies have shown that printers could release particulate matters and pose adverse effects on indoor air quality. In this study, a thorough investigation was designed to assess the aerosol printer particle total number concentration (TNC) and size distribution in normal office environment, one copy center, and a clean chamber. Particle analyzers, SMPS, OPS, and CPC3007 were used to monitor the total printing process. In normal office environment, 37 laser printers out of all surveyed 55 printers were classified as high particle emitters. Comparing to laser printers, 5 inkjet printers showed no particle emission. Particle emission level in a copy center increased slightly with TNC elevating to about 2 times of the aerosol background. Simulating test in a clean chamber indicated that printer-emitted particles were dominated by particles in nanoscale (diameter of particle, D(p) < 100 nm). These particles in a sealed clean chamber attenuated so slowly that it still held at high level with the concentration of 1.5 x 10(4) particles/cm3 after printing for 2.5 hours. Our present results demonstrate that printers indeed release particulates which keeping at a high concentration level in the indoor environment. Special care should be taken to this kind of widely applied machines and effective controls of particle emission at printing processes are necessary.