Research Article Determination of Lead, Cations, and Anions Concentration in Indoor and Outdoor Air at the Primary Schools in Kuala Lumpur Normah Awang and Farhana Jamaluddin Environmental Health and Industrial Safety Programme, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Jalan Raja Muda Abdul Aziz, 50300 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Correspondence should be addressed to Normah Awang; awang normah@yahoo.com Received 13 April 2014; Accepted 13 July 2014; Published 22 July 2014 Academic Editor: Mynepalli K. C. Sridhar Copyright © 2014 N. Awang and F. Jamaluddin. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Tis study was carried out to determine the concentration of lead (Pb), anions, and cations at six primary schools located around Kuala Lumpur. Low volume sampler (MiniVol PM 10 ) was used to collect the suspended particulates in indoor and outdoor air. Results showed that the concentration of Pb in indoor air was in the range of 5.18 ± 1.08 g/g–7.01 ± 0.08 g/g. All the concentrations of Pb in indoor air were higher than in outdoor air at all sampling stations. Te concentrations of cations and anions were higher in outdoor air than in indoor air. Te concentration of Ca 2+ (39.51 ± 5.01 mg/g–65.13 ± 9.42 mg/g) was the highest because the cation existed naturally in soil dusts, while the concentrations of NO 3 − and SO 4 2− were higher in outdoor air because there were more sources of exposure for anions in outdoor air, such as highly congested trafc and motor vehicles emissions. In comparison, the concentration of NO 3 − (29.72 ± 0.31 g/g–32.00 ± 0.75 g/g) was slightly higher than SO 4 2− . Te concentrations of most of the parameters in this study, such as Mg 2+ , Ca 2+ , NO 3 − , SO 4 2− , and Pb 2+ , were higher in outdoor air than in indoor air at all sampling stations. 1. Introduction Air pollution is generally the most widespread and obvious kind of environmental damage [1]. Kuala Lumpur, which is the federal capital and the largest city in Malaysia, is also sufering from air pollution problem. Te last decade has seen its phenomenal growth as a centre of commerce in the region, and this trend is still continuing. With the increase in energy consumption and urbanization in Kuala Lumpur, the increase in ambient air pollution seems inevitable [2]. Air pollutants, which exist in the form of solid, semisolid, liquid, and gas, are emitted directly or indirectly from their sources. Some heavy metals such as lead and cadmium are common environmental pollutants in industrialised and developing countries [3]. Lead is a very toxic, nondegradable heavy metal that exists naturally in Earth’s crust [4, 5]. Lead in the atmosphere arises from two major ways, which are primary sources including lead from mining activities and secondary sources such as industrial emission, battery manufacturing, and additives in motor vehicles gasoline. In any population, children are more vulnerable to lead expo- sure than adults because children have higher hand-to-mouth activities and higher rate of gastrointestinal absorption, and their developing brains are more sensitive to insults from lead exposure [6]. Ionic species either anions or cations can signifcantly be found in the form of particulate in the air especially during air pollution. Generally, anions such as sulphate (SO 4 2− ) and nitrate (NO 3 − ) are secondary particulates and usually dominate air pollution. Calcium (Ca 2+ ) that arises from soils and magnesium (Mg 2+ ) and chloride (Cl − ) that comes from marine sources are some examples of cations [7]. Tis paper reports the concentration of lead, cations, and anions in air at the primary schools in Kuala Lumpur. Ten, the concentrations of the parameters between indoor and outdoor air in every sampling station are compared. Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Environmental and Public Health Volume 2014, Article ID 408275, 3 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/408275