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At indoor workplaces such as in offices and schools, the air should in general have outdoor air quality according to the German Workplace Ordinance. In practice however, instead of outdoor air quality, statistically derived reference values are usually referred to when assessing air quality. Unfortunately, these often come from areas that are put to a different use influencing the assessment. To obtain a statistically sound overview of indoor pollution in schools and to facilitate a comparison with existing reference values for offices, measurements in 421 classrooms at 119 schools were carried out for the first time in the period from 2004 to 2009. The results show that the pollution level in classrooms is slightly lower than that in offices, although the difference is not considerable. Furthermore, the calculated 90th percentiles are well below the available guide values I of the Indoor Air Hygiene Committee. The findings are used as a basis for proposed indoor workplace reference values in schools (classroom reference values). |