Measurement method
Exposure assessment
Also: personal exposure, microenvironment
Estimating how much of a pollutant a person actually receives — concentration multiplied by time in each place, across a day or a lifetime. Because people spend about 90 % of their time indoors, indoor concentrations dominate personal exposure even for outdoor pollutants.
Why it matters indoors
A monitor on a wall measures concentration; exposure is what reaches the person. Exposure assessment combines concentrations in each microenvironment (bedroom, kitchen, office, car, outdoors) with time-activity data, or measures directly with personal samplers worn on the body. The RIOPA and similar studies established that for most pollutants indoor time dominates; for cooking-related particles and formaldehyde, the home alone can account for most of a lifetime dose.
In the literature
- Phthalate Concentration Estimation and Exposure Assessment and Health Risk Assessment in Indoor Organic Film (2023). Indoor Air. doi:10.1155/2023/5491647 CKB 0933
- Cancer Risk Disparities between Hispanic and Non-Hispanic White Populations: The Role of Exposure to Indoor Air Pollution. CKB 0709
- Eberhard Systematic review of microplastics and nanoplastics in indoor and outdoor air: identifying a framework and data needs for quantifying human inhalation exposures (2024). doi:10.1038/s41370-023-00634-x CKB 0945
Studies in the Coridum Knowledge Base in which this term is used. The definition follows standard usage in WHO, ISO and textbook sources; it is not quoted from these papers.
CKB = document number in the Coridum Knowledge Base, our curated library of peer-reviewed studies. Follow the DOI for the original paper.
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Exposure assessment. Coridum Knowledge G-0075, 5 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0075/