University of Colorado Boulder cheerleaders train at the Dal Ward Athletic Center in 2018. Credit: Katie Weeman / CIRES
A sweaty, snorting and exercising person emits as many chemicals from his body as up to five sedentary people, according to a new study from the University of Colorado at Boulder. And, notably, these human emissions, including
“class =” glossaryLink “> amino acids of sweat or acetone from the breath, combine chemically with bleach cleaning products to form new airborne chemicals with unknown impacts on indoor air quality.
“Humans are a major source of internal emissions,” said Zachary Finewax, a research scientist at CIRES and lead author of the new study published in the current edition of Indoor Air. “And the chemicals in the indoor air, whether from our bodies or cleaning products, don’t just disappear, they stay and travel through spaces like gyms, reacting with other chemicals.”
In 2018, the CU Boulder team equipped a weight room at Dal Ward Athletic Center – a campus for college athletes, from weightlifters to cheerleaders – with a set of air sampling equipment. The instruments collected data from the weight room and the air supply, measuring a series of airborne chemicals in real time before, during and after the training of UC athletes. The team found that athletes’ bodies produced 3 to 5 times more emissions during training, compared to when they were at rest.
“Using our state-of-the-art equipment, this was the first time that the analysis of the indoor air of a gym was done with this high level of sophistication. We were able to capture emissions in real time to see exactly how many chemicals the athletes were emitting and at what rate, ”said Demetrios Pagonis, a postdoctoral researcher at CIRES and co-author of the new work.
Many gyms often use bleach-based products to clean sweaty equipment. And while these cleaning products work to kill surface bacteria – they also combine with sweat emissions – mixing to form a new cocktail of chemicals.
The team was the first to observe a chemical group called N-chloraldimines – a product of the reaction of bleach with amino acids – in the air of the gym. This meant that the chlorine from the bleach cleaner sprayed onto the equipment was reacting with the amino acids released from sweaty bodies, the authors report.
And while more research is needed to determine the specific impacts this can have on indoor air quality, chemically similar products of ammonia reaction with bleach can be harmful to human health.
“Since people spend about 90 percent of our time indoors, it is critical that we understand how chemicals behave in the spaces we occupy,” said Joost de Gouw, CIRES Fellow, professor of chemistry at CU Boulder and corresponding author in the article. Although the researchers collected all the data for this pre-pandemic study, the team says their results illustrate that a modern gym with low occupancy and good ventilation can be relatively safe for training, especially if masks are worn.
Reference: “Quantification and characterization of the source of volatile organic compounds from exercise and application of chlorine-based cleaning products in a university athletic center” by Zachary Finewax, Demetrios Pagonis, Megan S. Claflin, Anne V. Handschy, Wyatt L. Brown, Olivia Jenks, Benjamin A. Nault, Douglas A. Day, Brian M. Lerner, Jose L. Jimenez, Paul J. Ziemann and Joost A. de Gouw, December 18, 2020, Indoor Air.
DOI: 10.1111 / ina.12781
“Quantifying and characterizing the source of volatile organic compounds from exercise and applying chlorine-based cleaning products to a university sports center” published in Wiley’s Indoor Air on December 18, 2020. Authors include: Zachary Finewax (CIRES, CU Boulder Chemistry), Demetrios Pagonis (CIRES, CU Boulder Chemistry), Megan S. Claflin (Aerodyne Research), Anne V. Handschy (CIRES, CU Boulder Chemistry), Wyatt L. Brown (CIRES, CU Boulder Chemistry), Olivia Jenks ( CIRES, CU Boulder Chemistry)), Benjamin A. Nault (CIRES, CU Boulder Chemistry), Douglas A. Day (CIRES, CU Boulder Chemistry), Brian M. Lerner (Aerodyne Research), Jose L. Jimenez (CIRES, CU Boulder Chemistry), Paul J. Ziemann (CIRES, CU Boulder Chemistry), Joost A. de Gouw (CIRES, CU Boulder Chemistry).
The authors are grateful to the Sloan Foundation for funding the measurements and instrumentation used in this study, and CU Boulder Dal Ward Athletic Center for using their facilities to collect all data for this work.