For controlling and for setting ventilation standards to maintain acceptable indoor air quality, it would appear to be of greatest importance to determine the strength of relationships between contaminant concentrations on one hand and different rates of ventilation and how these rates are expressed on the other.
The levels reported in diverse publications of by products of cigarette combustion (acrolein, aldehydes, aromatic hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nicotine, nitrogen oxides, nitrosamines, particulates, and others for which scattered information is available - HCN, ketones, nitriles) are summarized in tabular form. Summaries also include information on test conditions such as ventilation, size and types of premises, monitoring conditions, number of smokers, and rate of smoking.
Measures of a number of ventilation parameters and of a number of pollutants from 21 locations furnished data for evaluating interrelations among commonly used descriptors of ventilation as well as their relation to frequently measured indoor gaseous and particulate pollutants.
Compares the levels of possible cigarette smoke-related aerosols with the prevalence of health-related complaints in offices with different regulations about smoking, using data from two sources. The first was a review of 111 buildings with persistent building-related complaints and 32 buildings where there were no complaints. The second was a questionnaire completed by approximately 1100 employees from 9 buildings in New York City. The available data do not support a conclusion that increased reports of building-related complaints are associated with smoking.
An increasing incidence of 'building illness' is being noted among white-collar workers due to the high pollutant content of air in modern energy-efficient office buildings.
The interpretation of the data presented in the named article (by Nazaroff W W et al, NO 1767) is extended to develop an improved model that can be used to predict radon concentrations in the single family house tested and possibly inothers as well. In particular, a more complete set of low sump activity data has been replotted.
A simple means for determining air infiltration rates into homes and buildings for assessment of indoor air quality and energy conservation measures, based on a passive perfluorocarbon tracer (PFT) technique, was evaluated in a well-defined environmental chamber under experimental conditions of 1) constant temperature and ventilation rate, 2) constant temperature, variable ventilation
rate, and 3) variable temperature, constant ventilation rate.
A miniature passive perfluorocarbon tracer system was successfully applied to the determination of air infiltration and exfiltration rates from each zone of a multizoned structure, as well as the air exchange rates between zones inhomes, multiple unit condominiums, naturally ventilated apartment buildings, and large commercial buildings with multiple air-handling systems. Use of the multizone technique in indoor air quality assessments and air-handling system stratification studies appears to be quite feasible with the availability of this measuring system.
This study examines the experimental determination of the apparent net formaldehyde source strength in a group of sixteen nominally identical wood frame houses built by one contractor using similar construction details and materials. The houses