Evaluating the Contamination by Indoor Dust in Dubai

Abstract

Nowadays, people spend most of their time indoors. Despite constantly cleaning these spaces, dust apparition cannot be avoided. Since dust can contain chemical elements that negatively impact people’s health, we propose the analysis of the metals from the indoor dust component collected in different locations in Dubai, UAE. Multivariate statistics (correlation matrix, clustering) and quality indicators (QI)—Igeo, PI, EF, PLI, Nemerow—were used to assess the contamination level with different metals in the dust. We proposed two new QIs (CPI and AQI) and compared the results with those provided by the most used indices—PLI and Nemerow. It is shown that high concentrations of some elements (Ca in this case) can significantly increase the values of the Nemerow index, CPI, and AQI. In contrast, the existence of low concentrations leads to the decrement of the PLI.