Air pollution of beauty salons by cosmetics from the analysis of suspensed particulate matter

Beauty salons make a considerable part of the service sector. However, although the beauty salon staffs are exposed to a vast number of ambient chemicals during the whole workday, the occupational health hazard and the indoor air quality in beauty salons are poorly known. Specifically, reports on relations between indoor particulate matter and its outdoor or indoor sources in beauty salons are rare. Here we studied the effects of external and internal sources of aerosol in beauty salons on indoor ambient particulate matter and on its elemental and organic carbon contents. We selected four beauty salons differing in the number and type of particulate matter indoor and outdoor sources. The approach consisted in taking ten eight-hour samples of total suspended particulate matter and ten samples of its respirable sub-fraction simultaneously indoors and outdoors at each site, then analyzing them for carbon content using a thermo-optical method. The ambient concentrations of particulate matter and organic carbon were higher indoors than outdoors. We show that differences between indoor and the outdoor concentrations is due to the indoor use of cosmetics and other human activity. The effects of indoor sources on indoor elemental carbon concentrations are lower than on organic carbon concentrations.