A team in Kuwait has carried out a micro-environment investigation of pollution in city parking garages. They measured carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides (NOx), and methane concentrations, in three locations on each parking floor, and repeated the measurements eight times at each floor, over a nine-month period across five parking garages.
Carbon monoxide levels were found to be higher than acceptable in terms of health risk at the parking garages in the morning and evenings, the rush hour periods. Temperature and humidity and parking density played an important role in the absolute figures. They conclude that CO monitoring devices should be installed in parking garages. Whether or not the fitting of such devices would lead to better parking garage management in terms of traffic flow may well be a moot point.
The data could, however, help inform such management and perhaps future design of parking garages in commonly hot and humid parts of the world.
Al-Rukaibi, F., Al-Mutairi, N. and Al-Rashed, A. (2018) ‘Concentration of air pollutants in an urban parking garage in Kuwait’, World Review of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, Vol. 14, Nos. 2/3, pp.241–265.