Magnetic signature of indoor air pollution: Household dust study

The combination of magnetic and geochemical methods was used to determine the mineralogy, grain size and domain structure of magnetic particles in indoor dust collected in 195 sites in Warsaw, Poland. Data show an asymmetric distribution of magnetic susceptibility (χ) in the wide range of 20–1514 × 10^?8 m³ kg^?1. Comparison of magnetic parameters shows that the internal dust contains outside pollution characteristic for air and soil. More than 90% of indoor dust samples were characterized by roughly uniform magnetic mineralogy, typical for fine grained magnetite (diameter of 0.2–5 μm), and grain size between pseudo-single-domain and small multi-domain with small contribution of superpara-magnetic particles (～10%). Samples with χ larger than 220 × 10^?8 m³ kg^?1 contain mainly magnetite and an anthropogenic metallic Fe with T _C > 700°C. The indoor dust contains, characteristic for the urban areas, spherical magnetic particles originated from fossil fuel combustion processes and mixture of irregular angular iron-oxides grains containing other elements, including Na, Ca, Al, Si, K, S, Mn, Cl, and Mg.