A good air quality control system ensures that the most common harmful gaseous contaminants are kept below permissible levels particularly in forced ventilated spaces. Such a system can ensure a high standard of indoor air and a healthy environment. The volume of fresh air in a room can be adjusted according to the number of occupants and their level of activity. It is important to keep a vigilant eye on the levels of the most common harmful gases, because most of them cannot be detected by human senses.
The importance of IAQ to Finland's society and economy has led to the realisation that nationally planned and coordinated activities are necessary to achieve reliable results. For 20 years the Finnish government has had a national policy to coordinate different governmental, local and private policies to improve IAQ in homes, schools, offices, public places etc. This program has been very successful although there are still many buildings with damp, mould and other similar problems and the quality of construction falls below that required.
Many buildings in Austria experience poor indoor climate states and critical states of their construction. Possible causes of the high moisture content of indoor air might be bad ventilation or high moisture content of the buildings because of rising damp or weathering. Retrofitting is needed to increase indoor climate comfort levels. It is essential when designing the retrofitting to understand and predict the influences of different actions on the building's indoor climate and behaviour.
Reviews several key aspects of ventilation and indoor air quality standards. Also highlights the complexity of the IAQ issues from the standardization viewpoint. Detailed technical solutions are dependent on project-specific criteria including climatic, cultural and other aspects as well as differences in national regulations, standards, guidelines and available IAQ technologies.
Relates exposure measurements for indoor air quality in schools to perception of IAQ by employees. A questionnaire was used to gather information on subjective air quality, domestic exposures and health aspects. 38 schools were covered in the study. A 53% section of personnel reported bad or very bad indoor air quality. Worst reports came from the younger personnel, those dissatisfied with their psychosocial work climate and those not exposed to domestic tobacco smoke. Less IAQ dissatisfaction was reported for older schools and those with displacement ventilation.
A cross sectional study with control was performed to identify sick building syndrome symptoms in office workers in northern France, based on an air conditioned and a naturally ventilated building. Found that exposure to air conditioning was linked to an increased prevalence of symptoms, and increased sickness absence. Two determinants not previously described resulting from logistic regression were family history of respiratory diseases and 'do-it-yourself' activities.
Environmental conditions, sick building syndrome symptoms, job satisfaction, job stress, and occupational and personal information were assess by questionnaire of 4479 employees from 27 air conditioned offices, and indoor air quality measurements taken. IAQ met the ASHRAE guidelines for all the buildings. Found that the number of sick building syndrome symptoms per employee was linked linearly to computer use, job stress, job satisfaction, number of allergies, migraine and eye wear.
Aiming at the running property of hig-speed passenger cars, the paper discusses its indoor air quality's evaluation index and method for calculating outdoor ventilation rate. It studies the influence of the factors of outdoor air quality, outdoor ventilation rate, outdoor pressure fluctuating, drainage mode and fitment material to the indoor air quality and points out some improving measures for them.
Indoor air contaminants may be grouped into four categories: microbial contaminants; respirable particles; gaseous contaminants, and vaporous contaminants. Conventional filters like HEPA filters can only be useful for bioaerosols and respirable particulate. Absorbers such as activated adsorbed can be useful for almost all gases and vaporous contaminant, but eventually they will lose efficiency. Photocatalysis can remove all VOCs and bioeffluent, but not very useful for gases contaminant such as ammonia.
A research initiative, aimed at obtaining status-quo measurements of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and ventilation characteristics in air-conditioned office buildings in Singapore, has resulted in an extensive database, which details are presented in this paper. An integrated IAQ audit methodology developed during the course of the research will be presented and its application to nine buildings will be discussed in chemical, biological and particulate dimensions as well as the thermal comfort parameters.
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