Numerical study of the exposure to volatile organic compounds released from liquid crystal displays in an office

Abstract

People spend about 90% of their time indoors and indoor volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are critical to human health. Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) widely used in offices are a new source of indoor VOCs, with an emission rate of 8.25 × 109 molecules s−1 cm−2 reported by Liu and Abbatt (2021). Therefore, this work studied the exposure to LCD VOCs in a four-person office environment through numerical simulation. Air change rate per hour (ACH), geometric setting and partition were also investigated. The results revealed that at an ACH of 4, human users inhaled 0.07%–0.25% of the released VOCs. The deviations for different users were 4–9 times due to various locations. Different geometric settings resulted in 2–3 times exposure deviations. Increasing the ACH to 20 led to an 88% reduction. The estimated lifetime exposure via inhalation was 8.2 × 1018 VOC molecules or 1 mg per LCD. This study contributed to the understanding of exposure to VOCs from LCDs.