Effect of cancer risk caused by the pollutant exposure from indoor dust

• Main Author: Chia, Shi Yang
• Other Authors: Fang Mingliang
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Engineering::Environmental engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/78750
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The main aim of this study is to investigate the cancer risks of indoor dust exposure. There are also the additional goals of identifying and quantifying the concentration of pollutants which contribute to its carcinogenic properties. This is done by extracting pollutants with various solvents of increasing polarity, then to subject the processed extracts to the Ames reversal assay and to measurements determining the concentrations of the pollutants. Overall, it was found that exposure to household dust does carry carcinogenic risks. Tests with the Ames MPF reversal assay have shown that there are risks of cancer, even more so when done with the inclusion of the S9 fraction (of rat liver extract). A large number of compounds were detected in the 16 samples of household dust, including BPA and a number of PAHs known to be carcinogens. While the concentrations of BPA and its related analogues were much higher than the concentrations of the PAHs, it was found that the mutagenicity of the household dust extracts have a much higher correlation to the total concentrations of PAHs. There were attempts to measure the concentrations of heavy metals as well, but the method of extraction may have left most of them behind.