USER EXPOSURE TO PRINTER EMISSIONS UNDER DIFFERENT VENTILATION SCENARIOS: A CASE STUDY APPROACH

Abstract

Laser printing, with its emissions poses health risks to users. Although the types of pollutants that printers produce are well-researched, less is known about the impact of the types of ventilation on exposure to those pollutants. Given that humans spend up to 90% of their time indoors where laser printers are, it highlights the need to choose the most appropriate ventilation system that will keep printer emissions at a safe level. This study focuses on the National University of Singapore (NUS) School of Design and Environment 1 (SDE1) printing room to determine user exposure to printer emissions under different ventilation scenarios in the real environment. The scenarios include having the room without ventilation, with the ACMV system in normal operation, with cross-ventilation, single-sided ventilation and cross-ventilation with pedestal fan assisted. Real-time measurements of common printer pollutants and the overall indoor air quality of the room were carried out during printing for the evaluation of printer emissions and the ventilation systems. Specifically, 30 black and white pages with 5% toner coverage were printed during each round of air sampling.

In this study, air pollutants were maintained at safe levels under all scenarios and it was concluded that exposure to printer pollutants is insignificant with light printing activity. This research found that different contaminants were best regulated by different methods of ventilation hence, there is no conclusive result as to which particular scenario is the most optimal for reducing printer emissions. However, formaldehyde appeared to be the most prominent emission by the printer used in this experiment and it was best regulated by cross-ventilation with fan.