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Thirty female subjects were exposed for 280 minutes to four conditions in balanced order of presentation: to 20 C/40%, 23 C/50%, 26 C/60% RH at10 L/s/p outside air, and to 20 C/40% RH at 3.5 L/s/p. They performed simulated office work throughout each exposure and repeatedly marked a set of visual-analogue scales to indicate their perception of environmental conditions and of the intensity of SBS symptoms at the time. They were repeatedly reminded to adjust their clothing so as to remain in thermal comfort, and succeeded in doing so.

Relationship between sick building symptoms and type of heating system were investigated through a questionnaire in 4815 dwellings from 231 multi-family buildings built before 1961. Results do not demonstrate that energy savings measures in general increase the risk of sick building syndrome, but major reconstruction of old dwellings may increase this risk.

A 2x2 replicated field intervention experiment was conducted in a call-centre providing a public telephone directory service: Outdoor air supply rate was 8% or 80% of the total airflow of 430 L/s providing 3.5 h-1; and the supply air filters were either new or used (i.e., used in place for 6 months). Each of these 4 conditions was maintained for a full working week at a time. Room temperature and humidity averaged 24 C and 27% RH.

This paper provides a summary of current knowledge about the associations of ventilation types in office buildings with sick building syndrome symptoms. Most studies completed to date indicate that relative to natural ventilation, air conditioning, with or without humidification, was consistently associated with a statistically significant increase in the prevalence of one or more SBS symptoms, by approximately 30% to 200%.

The contaminant emission rate is an important parameter describing the potential for materials to affect indoor air quality through the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Emission rates have traditionally been inferred from gas-phase concentration measurements obtained through chamber studies. However, models suggest that the rate at which VOCs are emitted by diffusion-controlled materials may be influenced by ventilation rates.

CSTB has built an experimental house MARIA: Mechanised house for Advanced Research on Indoor Air. The house is dedicated to study pollutants transfers, test ventilation systems, settle field investigation methods, and validate computational models. MARIA will be instrumented and automated according to pre-established scenario of operation reproducing parameters related to human presence and behaviour. The human presence is simulated with heat load and water vapour and pollutants emission. The operation of equipments such as doors and windows, domestic devices, will be automated.

In January 2002, a new European project named HOPE (Health Optimisation Protocol for Energy-efficient Buildings) started with 14 participants from nine European countries. The final goal of the project is to provide the means to increase the number of energy-efficient buildings that are at the same time healthy, thus decreasing the energy use by buildings, and consequently, resulting in a reduction of CO2 emissions from primary energy used for ventilation, heating and humidity control.

In addressing the goals of energy-efficiency and indoor air quality (IAQ) in homes, industry teams in the U.S. Department of Energy's Building America program are installing mechanical ventilation systems in tight homes. A variety of designs - some simple and inexpensive, some more sophisticated - have been demonstrated. The advanced designs provide more consistent ventilation over time, more uniform ventilation among rooms, and source control measures that reduce the air-change requirement.

The basic mechanism for natural ventilation in a building involves air flowing through purpose-made ventilator openings. These ventilators must be carefully designed as natural ventilation driving forces are weak compared to the dynamic forces created by mechanical systems. This paper describes a series of experimental parametric studies that investigated how components within a ventilator (in this case louvers and wire mesh screens) interacted. Airflow measurements through the individual louver and mesh components were compared to the airflow through mesh / louver combinations.

This study was aimed to analyse the ventilation efficiency and indoor air quality in the conventional kitchens, when porous screens were installed on the transoms. Numerical simulations and laboratory full-scale experiments were carried out in the model kitchen in the Department of Architecture at National Cheng-Kung University. The influences of porous screens on the temperature fields, flow structures and ventilation rates were indicated. The "Tracer-gas Concentration Decay" method was conducted to measure the air exchange rate and the age of air in the model kitchen.