Vulnerable populations in healthcare facilities are more sensitive to exposure to indoor air pollutants, and therefore are more affected by such pollutants than the general population. This was the underlying reason why studies of indoor air pollutant concentration distribution and health risk assessment have been conducted targeting facilities, such as daycare centers, medical facilities, elderly care facilities, and postnatal care centers. However, previous studies have mainly focused on daycare and medical facilities for their research, and relatively speaking, studies conducted on the other venues are lacking. Therefore, this study aims to present the current status of indoor air quality and perform a health risk assessment in regard to Formaldehyde exposure at postnatal care centers and elderly care facilities. Here, the study focused on facilities that had undergone pollution level inspections from January 2017 to December 2021. A total of 81 postnatal care centers and 48 elderly care facilities were selected as the subject of the study. Then, the study utilized concentrations of five elements (CO2, HCHO, PM10, PM2.5, TBC) to determine the status of indoor air quality of both postnatal care centers and elderly care facilities. For health risk assessment, HCHO concentration was used. The investigation demonstrated that the yearly average concentration of the five elements stood within the indoor air quality maintenance standards, and the ratio of PM2.5 to PM10 in the two types of facilities was distributed as high as about 70%. In addition, the study showed that HCHO and TBC demonstrated a positive correlation when the relationship between indoor temperature and humidity with the five elements was examined. The health risk assessment showed that the cancer risk level of postnatal care center users stood below 10-6, below the level that is perceived as an acceptable risk. The cancer risk of workers from both postnatal care centers and elderly care facilities and elderly care facility users exceeded the acceptable risk level of 10-6, but was shown to be below 10-4, the maximum acceptable risk.

In this study, we measured the concentration of Particulate Matter(PM10), Formaldehyde(HCHO), and Total Bacteria Count (TBC) at two facilities: day care centers, and postnatal care centers located in the cities of Gyeonggi, Gangwon, Jeolla and Gyeongsang from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2015. PM10 concentration was similar to the day care centers and postnatal care centers. HCHO concentration was the highest in the postnatal care centers. TBC concentration was the highest in the day care centers. Comparing the different cities, PM10 concentration was the highest in Gyeonggi, HCHO concentration was the highest in Gyeonggi, and TBC concentration was the highest in Gyeonggi. As a result of HCHO's risk assessment, it was found that adults exceeded the carcinogenicity tolerance of 10−6 specified by the US EPA. This study is expected to be helpful in preventing damage to health from the contaminated indoor air at sensitive facilities, and can be used as basic data for indoor air quality management.