Senior citizens are reported to be highly sensitive to environmental pollutants, including fine particulate matter. The purpose of this study is to investigate the distributions of fine particulate matter concentrations in town halls and senior citizens’ halls, where senior citizens typically spend a lot of time. The results of this investigation will serve as fundamental data for conducting indoor air quality studies and establishing a regional environmental health policy governing senior citizens’ facilities in Yeongwol county in the future. From January 4 to February 1, 2017, PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations in 170 seniors’ facilities located in Yeongwol county were measured. The average concentrations of PM10 and PM2.5 that were measured from each seniors’ facility chosen from Yeongwol county were 25.1 ± 18.9 μg/m3and 12.5 ± 9.3 μg/m3 respectively. Average concentrations and the average of maximum concentrations were lower than the living space standard of 100 μg/m3 for PM10 and the atmospheric environment standard of 50 μg/m3 for PM2.5, which were set by the Ministry of Environment for populations vulnerable to environmental pollution. As a result of analyzing the sources in seniors’ facilities in Yeongwol county during the winter months, it was found that indoor sources of air pollution such as cooking is main sources rather than outdoor sources of air pollution.

Asthmatics are more susceptible to fine particulate matters (PM2.5), compared to the general population. It has been reported that indoor PM2.5 is mainly generated by combustion of fossil fuels, meat or fish In particular, asthmatics are known to be more susceptible to indoor PM2.5 because 65 ∼ 95% of child or adult asthmatics stay inside the house. Thus, understanding the association between indoor activity patterns and variations in indoor PM2.5 levels is important. The purpose of this study is to determine the distribution of hourly indoor PM2.5 concentrations in asthmatics’ homes, and to evaluate its association with pan-frying cooking activity patterns, the most common PM2.5 emission related activity. From November 2017 to February 2018, real-time PM2.5 concentrations were measured in the living room of each asthmatic’s house (n = 35) for three weeks at 1 minute intervals. At the same time, self-reported daily activity patterns, hourly proportion (%) of cooking activities, were also recorded every hour over three weeks for each patient. In this study, we provided quantitative evidence that the distribution patterns of indoor hourly PM2.5 concentrations were associated with indoor cooking activities, especially in the homes of adult asthmatics. In addition, we observed that PM2.5 emitted by pan-frying could maintain even over up to 2 hour lagtime.