室内の揮発性有機化合物曝露が免疫疾患発症に及ぼす影響について

抄録

Gaseous chemicals in the atmosphere such as indoor Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have long been realized as the risk factor for several types of immune disorder including allergic asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Gaseous chemicals are transparent and odorless, therefore, there have not been enough safety precautions so far. Our field survey inside the medical settings (indoor VOCs were measured by GC-FID and GCMS.) indicates that poor air circulation obviously increases the concentration of VOCs beyond the safety level. Recently, our group demonstrated that exposure to safety standard level ozone gas, which is one of the VOCs, significantly aggravates the symptoms of acute lung injury in a mouse model, which indicated low levels of gaseous chemicals possibly has an impact on the development of respiratory diseases. The object of this study is to examine the possible relationship between indoor VOCs and the development of several immune disorders, and we compared the development of asthma and atopic dermatitis symptoms in mice between normal room air (contained VOCs) and clean air removed VOCs by an activated carbon chemical filter. The VOCs in the clean air treated with activated carbon chemical filters were measured by the GC-FID method, and it was verified that VOCs were removed by about 90% compared to normal air. Our findings suggest that the control of VOCs may influence the development of immune disorders since VOCs at concentrations similar to those in a typical hospital setting suppress the initial stage of allergic development in mice.