Reminds me about this recent Reddit thread where somebody ran an Ozone generator in a house for hours to get rid of smells, and in exchange ended up with a much worse situation: https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/q949go/holy_shit...

VOCs getting absorbed by surfaces was the most plausible theory in the comments there as well. Interesting to see more evidence for it.

That reminds me of when I was living right by the BLM protests/CHOP [0] in Seattle and got tear gas in my condo. I had just bought some new coffee beans to try out and when I did the next morning, thought they tasted super "chemical-y" and immediately threw them aways.

Turns out tear gas is known to seep into food items, especially porous food like coffee and bread [1]. Not surprised at all that VOCs linger in reservoirs as mentioned in the article.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest

[1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/tear-gas-is-way-more-dang...

I have never seen the word “partition” used in this way before. Hard to search for examples because unrelated computer graphics articles about surface partitioning dominate. I did find this:

Partitioning is the distribution of a solute, S, between two immiscible solvents (such as aqueous and organic phases). It is an equilibrium condition that is described by the following equation:

S(aq) ⇄ S(org)

Interesting to think that a surface can play a role comparable to a solvent. I wonder what a chemist would have to say about it.

https://www.chemicool.com/definition/partitioning.html

Does this mean the Germans are right with Lüften!? I habitually have done this as an American in the morning for my office, something about morning fresh air after the night seems right?

Interesting, it seems that the actual surface material of walls and/or furniture makes a large difference in how long VOCs stick around, due to differences in surface area at the microscopic scale.

I have a couple HEPA filters in my house that hopefully keep particulate exposure down. Does this mean that I have to run them longer? That I need more of them continuously running to keep exposure to VOCs low?

>Our estimates of the total surface partitioning capacity are much larger than if the reservoirs are taken to be thin organic films on smooth, impermeable surfaces.

... so is "smooth, impermeable surfaces" the current begrudgingly-accepted model or something? because there's no way any person who has ever been in a house would think that's a reasonable model. permeable surfaces are all over the place, literally most of the place because it includes essentially all walls and therefore wall interiors. managing that for e.g. humidity is a significant part of building design because it's completely inescapable... and that's before even touching stuff like fabric where your average couch probably has more surface area than all structural surfaces combined.

As with so many headlines like this, it should read (title), claims a single unreplicated study.