Abstract
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a widely practiced holistic care system in East Asia. However, concerns have arisen regarding the health risks associated with smoke inhalation from moxibustion treatments for both patients and medical staff. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare particulate matter (PM) concentrations in a TCM therapy room before and after installation of air purifiers. This study used multiple approaches to assess the impact of air filtration on PM levels and provided a more accurate evaluation. The first approach compared PM concentrations before and after implementation of air purifiers, which revealed significant reductions: PM(1) decreased by 16% to 72% (p < 0.01), PM(2.5) by 18% to 67% (p < 0.01), and PM(10) by13% to 49% (p < 0.05) at an air turnover rate (k(TO)) of 5.6 h(-1). The second approach compared indoor/outdoor (I/O) PM before and after implementation of air filters. The I/O ratios of PM(2.5) and PM(10) revealed significant reductions by 46% and 35%, respectively. The third approach used a linear regression model to evaluate the effectiveness of the air purifiers, revealing that their use significantly reduced PM(2.5) and PM(10) concentrations by 7.00 and 12.48 µg/m³, respectively. Despite these reductions, the percent reduction in PM(2.5) was relatively low in this study, even with a moderate k(TO) of 5.6 h(-1), comparing to other studies. This may be attributed to the high activity levels and crowded conditions in the therapy room, which limited the air purifiers' effectiveness. Vigorous mitigation measures, such as general ventilation with infiltration device, isolated room with local exhaust ventilation, are suggested to obtain the considerable decrease in PM.