school

This paper deals with a pilot study in portable classrooms where neither adequate ventilation nor associated conditioning of indoor air for occupant comfort were provided. Concentrations of pollutants should be mitigated with an appropriate ventilation and should lead to a reduction of symptoms of "sick building syndrome"

There are many schoolchildren who have a minor chemical sensitivity and cannot go toschool just because of the activities taken place such as arts & craft, waxing the floor or justopening the textbook. The solution for those children to go school is to protect them fromthose chemicals. However a renovation to make the whole classroom into a chemical freeroom is not a realistic solution for just one child not just because of its cost but also the effectto the other schoolchildren going in and out from chemical free room because of the risk ofrebound.

School indoor air quality has become of concern recently in Korea. In this paper, it is intendedto investigate the ventilation performance and thermal comfort characteristics of a classroom,when an outdoor air system is installed in addition to a ceiling-mounted heat pump system.Experiments were conducted in a full-scale model classroom to collect experimental data tovalidate numerical schemes. Three-dimensional temperature distributions were measured withthermocouples distributed throughout the space, and ventilation effectiveness was measuredusing a tracer gas technique.

Mixing ventilation and displacement ventilation were compared in an intervention study inclassrooms. Particles, cat allergen and CO2, were measured in classroom air at different levelsabove the floor, during regular lessons. With mixing ventilation, the particle concentrationtended to decrease with height, with a stronger gradient occurring for larger particles. Withdisplacement ventilation, the particle concentration increased with height, except for particles>25 m. The displacement system thus tended to have a slight upward displacement effect onmost of the particles.

After several cases of health problems in French schools, a methodology for health riskassessment related to indoor air quality (IAQ) was required. Based on measuredconcentrations in schools where acute symptoms possibly due to exposure to airborne sensoryirritants were reported, an index quantifying the sensory irritation potential was built andused. This paper focuses on one classroom where the index was successively applied withoutany ventilation system, after the implementation of passive ventilation grids and with amechanically controlled ventilation.

The system of education in Poland is affected by rapid and deep political, organizational,demographic and financial changes. Although requirements for indoor air quality aredescribed in detail in Polish building codes and standards, the real state of indoor environmentin classrooms is not well documented. However, published studies show that in schools withconventional stack ventilation indoor air quality is rather poor. Unintentionally, very oftenproblems are related to modernized buildings where energy conservation measures have beenapplied.

Within the framework of the French national research program PRIMEQUAL, measurementsof outdoor and indoor pollution have been carried out in eight schools of La Rochelle (France)and its suburbs. The buildings were naturally ventilated by opening the windows ormechanically ventilated, and showed various air permeabilities. Ozone, nitrogen oxides (NOand NO2), and particles (15 size intervals ranging from 0.3 to 15 m) concentrations werecontinuously monitored indoors and outdoors for two 2-week periods.

The aim of this work was to assess the influence of the ambient air quality and some indoorsources on the concentration levels of airborne fine particles and volatile organic compoundsin a large school of arts. Measurements were conducted, for both indoor and supply air, ineight office rooms in four floors controlled by four separate air handling units (AHU). Fineparticle measurements by SMPS in the size range 15-700 nm indicate that the placement ofthe HVAC air feed points and different AHUs affect the total particle concentration and sizedistribution in the supply air.

Thirty classrooms in 10 schools in Shanghai, China, were investigated in winter. Dust wascollected by vacuum cleaning, analysed for ergosterol, muramic acid, and 3-hydroxy fattyacids (LPS) by tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MSMS). Airborne microoganisms weresampled on Nucleopore filters (CAMNEA). The compound 1-octen-3-ol was found in higherconcentrations in indoor than in outdoor air. Total indoor bacteria were positively correlatedto both LPS and muramic acid in settled dust. Indoor and outdoor air contained many viablespecies.

In two school buildings, concentrations of viable fungal spores in air, material and insurface samples were high indicating moisture and mould damages. Microbesincluded numerous moisture indicating species (e.g. Aspergillus versicolor,Trichoderma, Fusarium, Stachybotrys, Chaetomium, Streptomyces). After renovation,the school buildings were thoroughly cleaned. Surfaces still had abundant anddiversiform microflora. After repeated cleaning, abundance and diversity ofmicroflora diminished.