Environmental exposure of a community to airborne trichloroethylene

School officials and community citizens in Georgia were concerned about the airborne trichloroethylene (TCE) that was emanating from a nearby industrial facility that used TCE as a degreaser. No measurements of airborne TCE in the community were taken by public health officials or the industrial facility. The regulation of release of TCE from this facility was governed, in part, by mathematical model predictions of dispersion into the community. In support of community health concerns, the authors collected a limited number of outdoor and indoor air samples in the affected community, including those from a school, a small business, and three homes, for the analysis of TCE. The mean outdoor air concentration of TCE for all affected sites was 0.96 microg/m3 with a peak TCE concentration of 4.59 microg/m3. The mean indoor air concentration of TCE for all affected sites was 1.40 microg/m3 with a peak TCE concentration of 4.66 microg/m3. All collected air samples were below the guideline level of 5 microg TCE/m3 of air as used by the state of Georgia in the United States, but sample levels were greater than those found in large population studies of TCE in indoor and outdoor air in Minnesota in the United States and in Ottawa in Canada. Additional air samples are needed to better characterize the exposure of the community to TCE.