health

The epidemiological research on indoor environments in homes and health has been reviewed.Science has mainly been about health effects like asthma/allergies and exposures such as VOCs,mould and dampness. So far there are few conclusive findings. Dampness, pets, mites, dampness,ETS, a low ventilation rate, and some phthalates are risk factors for asthma and allergies. There is alarge need of studies of other health effects, and other exposures, especially regarding new frequentlyused chemicals.

In North America, there are ~140 million homes and 4 million public buildings. More than one fifth of theenergy use in Canada is used to condition air whether from the cold in much of Canada or providecooling and heating where summers are hot and humid and winters are cold. To reduce greenhousegases and improve housing affordability, this energy use needs to be reduced. In 1981, the Federal andProvincial governments understood that science was needed to inform building codes in relation tooccupant health.

For that study the measurement of parameters in the indoor environment were carried out with a simultaneous survey with questions dealing with elements of the indoor environment, health status and health problems. That study reveals a significant role for the psychological state and psychological factors of the respondents of natural ventilation when sujectively describing the indoor environment.

For that study an experiment was conducted during 2 months, in a call center : each week 26 operators returned questionnaires recording their environmental perceptions and sick building syndrome symptoms. In parallel, the recording of their average talk-time was monitored every 30 minutes.The results of that study confirm that increasing outdoor air supply rates and replacing used filters with new ones has a positive effect on health, comfort and productivity of workers.

The international center for indoor environment and energy, at the Technical University of Denmark has at its disposal 3 old and 9 new spaces for studying indoor environments and their incidence on human comfort, health, productivity at moderate energy demands. This paper describes those climate chambers, new laboratory and offices used for field experiments.

That research is based on the assumption that there are differences among normal subjects as to their vulnerability to stress-related symptoms to health/illnessThe study aims at increasing the understanding of SBS complaints in relation to personality factors.A relationship between personality characteristics and health-related behaviors, and between personality characteristics and perceived health is demonstrated.

For that study, 24 healthy non-sensitive persons were tested to analyse the respiratory effects caused by exposures to office dust. The results of the study suggest that most of the tradiitional risk factors can be rejected as single responsible risk factor.

As ventilation is a significant consumer of energy the rates of ventilation have often been minimized, particularly after the energy crisis in the early 70s, in order to reduce equipment and energy costs. This has caused in many countries indoor air quality problems. It has been shown that ventilation rates have adverse effects on communicable respiratory illnesses; on sick building syndrome symptoms; on productivity and perceived air quality. Often the prevalence of SBS symptoms is higher in air-conditioned buildings than in naturally ventilated buildings.

This study is concerned with the impact of indoor environment on the local National health in airconditioned spaces. The present study is carried out in different applications in Egypt. Two differentmethods are utilized in the present study. An experimental measurement program and comprehensive survey are carried out for some air conditioned applications. The numerical methodsare also utilized to simulate applications that represent the effect of indoor environment onoccupancy health using different indoor air quality indices.

To evaluate effect of indoor environment quality on productivity, the changes in cerebral bloodoxygenation by near infrared spectroscopy was examined. In this study, relationship between the changes in cerebral blood oxygenation and difficulty level of task was evaluated by subjective experiments. Four tasks were given to the subjects: single-digit addition, double-digit multiplication, triple-digit addition, and triple-digit multiplication. It was evaluated that the more difficult task types to solve, the more oxygenated hemoglobin and total hemoglobin concentration were needed.