HVAC&R Research (2014) 20, 276–294 Copyright C  2014 ASHRAE. ISSN: 1078-9669 print / 1938-5587 online DOI: 10.1080/10789669.2013.869126 Ventilation and indoor air quality in retail stores: A critical review (RP-1596) MARWA ZAATARI 1,∗ , ELENA NIRLO 1 , DARANEE JAREEMIT 2 , NEIL CRAIN 1 , JELENA SREBRIC 3 , and JEFFREY SIEGEL 1,4 1 Department Civil Architectural & Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA 2 Department Architectural Engineering, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA 3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA 4 Department of Civil Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada Identifying air pollutants that pose potential adverse health exposures in retail stores will facilitate exposure mitigation. Assessing the role of ventilation in mitigating this exposure is important to understand the energy implications of maintaining acceptable indoor air quality. In this work, we summarize results from 28 papers that report ventilation rates and/or pollutant concentrations in retail stores. These results were compared to available standards as well as data collected in non-retail environments. The findings of this review are: (1) half of the stores tested met/exceeded ASHRAE Standard 62.1-2010 (ASHRAE 2010a; or California Code of Regulations Title 24-2010) for ventilation; (2) PM 2.5 , acrolein, formaldehyde, and acetaldehyde exceeded their established, most conservative limits/reference exposures for a few of the stores tested in the United States, and outside the United States, researchers reported PM 10 , benzene, and trichloroethylene as additional pollutants found at concentrations that exceeded their limits; (3) alternative control methods would be more effective, and possibly more economical, than ventilation; (4) meeting or exceeding the ventilation require- ments does not necessarily negate the presence of pollutants above their suggested limits; and (5) using disability-adjusted-life-year (DALY) as a metric of disease burden, two pollutants were identified as priority hazards in retail stores: PM 2.5 and acrolein. Control strategies should focus on decreasing exposure of retail employees to these pollutants generated indoors or infiltrated from outdoors. Introduction Among commercial buildings, retail buildings rank second in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, after of- fice buildings (Zhang et al. 2011, Kennedy et al. 2012). Within retail stores, HVAC systems have been identified as one of the largest energy users, accounting for 28% to 48% of the to- tal building energy use (Alhafi et al. 2012). The retail sector employs 15 million workers, approximately 10% of the U.S. workforce (National Retail Federation [NRF] 2010), making the indoor air quality (IAQ) of retail buildings an important occupational exposure consideration. Additionally, the aver- age American above the age of 15 years spends 0.48 hours per day purchasing goods and groceries (American Time Use Sur- vey [ATUS] 2011), further highlighting the importance of IAQ in these environments. Ventilation is generally regarded as the most effective measure to improve IAQ when source control is Received July 23, 2013; accepted November 19, 2013 Marwa Zaatari, Student Member ASHRAE, is PhD student. Elena Nirlo, Student Member ASHRAE, is PhD student. Dara- nee Jareemit, Associate Member ASHRAE, is PhD student. Neil Crain, PhD, is Researcher. Jelena Srebric, PhD, Member ASHRAE, is Professor. Jeffrey Siegel, PhD, Member ASHRAE, is Associate Professor. ∗ Corresponding author e-mail: marwa.zaatari@gmail.com not an option. However, there is a tradeoff between increasing ventilation to improve IAQ and saving fan and conditioning energy associated with ventilation. A sustainable approach to retail environment ventilation must also consider the occu- pant perceptions and health exposures for retail workers and customers. Despite the importance of retail buildings, there have been no published reviews focusing on contaminants of concern in retail buildings, and whether ventilation can be used to control these contaminants below their reference or regulatory limits. Specifically this literature review addresses the following questions: 1. How do ventilation rates measured in retail stores compare to standards? 2. What are the dominant pollutants in different types of retail spaces? 3. How do different ventilation measurement methods affect the reported results? 4. What are the associations between ventilation and IAQ? 5. What are the contaminants of concern from an exposure perspective? This article addresses these questions by summarizing ven- tilation rates and pollutants concentrations reported in the relevant literature. These data are also compared to the avail- able standards and guidelines, as well as data collected in Downloaded by [University Of Maryland] at 11:22 07 May 2014