IoT-Based Air Quality Monitoring in Hair Salons: Screening of Hazardous Air Pollutants Based on Personal Exposure and Health Risk Assessment

Abstract

Hair salons use many hair products that have toxic chemicals in them. These toxic chemicals include volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde, and particulate matter. Daily exposure to these pollutants causes severe health issues in the long run. This study aims to find the concentration of the air pollutants such as PM₁, PM_2.5, PM₁₀, TVOC, CO₂, and formaldehyde in four hair salons located in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. In this paper, we propose an IoT-based air quality monitoring system with integrated sensors to monitor the concentration of air pollutants remotely via ThingSpeak data analytics cloud platform in hair salons. The maximum 15 min average concentration values of PM1, PM2.5, and PM10 were 128, 154, and 169 µg/m3 respectively. The TVOC levels exhibited a rapid increase of about 80–90% during facials and hair gel application and a peak value of about 5248.25 ppb was measured at salon 2. Also, weekend and weekday comparison is done. It was found that the weekend concentrations of the measured pollutants are comparatively higher than weekday concentrations. After analyzing the pollutant concentration, the effects of primary health parameters such as blood pressure and pulse rate of the hairdressers are measured. One-third of the hairdressers displayed high blood pressure values with a maximum of 161/104 which falls under stage 2 hypertension. Also, secondary parameters such as temperature, humidity, ventilation type, and number of customers are also measured. From the overall analysis, it is suggested that adequate ventilation and regulated product usage are said to reduce the effects of indoor air pollution.