The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of work-related symptoms, accessed by a standardized questionnaire, of full-time workers from a sealed building, with HVAC system, in comparison with a naturally ventilated building in Rio de Janeiro, a city with hot and humid climate.
The cross-sectional study involved 1,736 full-time office workers of a sealed 42-storey office building and 950 of a non-sealed 14-storey office building, both situated in the downtown area of Rio de Janeiro.

The aim of this study was to investigate if work-related symptoms (Sick Building Syndrome SBS), assessed by a standardized questionnaire, could be related to the concentration of the main indoor pollutants, in office workers of a sealed building in a tropical city. For that, 1736 office workers of a 42 storey sealed building were asked to answer the questionnaire.

Sick Building Syndrome or Sick House Syndrome (SBS/SHS) has become a serious problem in Japanese daily life.This survey was conducted in 53 houses in Miyagi prefecture during four summer seasons from 2000 to 2003 to understand the states of indoor air pollution and occupants health conditions in dwellings suspected as Sick Houses.It appears that the relationship between chemical substance concentration and subjective symptoms is not clear and the causes of symptoms are different between individuals.

The transmission paths of infectious diseases remained a myth up to now.Our hypothesis is that, on windless days, the outflow from a window on the lower floor of a building will re-enter the immediate upper floor, and therefore bring the droplet aerosols upstairs. The objective of this project is to reveal the mechanisms of this airflow by actuallyquantifying the fraction of the lower-floor exhaust air within the intake air of the adjacent upper floor.

In 2003, a SARS negative pressure isolation ward was built in Beijing to isolate patients. According to it, the authors carried out a numerical simulation and validated the experiment to optimize the indoor air distribution for it. They also compared the results from the simulation with those from measurement.As can be seen from the simulation, an acceptable airflow pattern is obtained in most places of the isolation room.

A downward ventilation system has been proposed as a standard ventilation design by Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) in Hong Kong for isolation rooms. This paper deals with the effect of a downward ventilation system in a general ward to test whether it could reduce the risk of cross infection. The dispersion of exhalation pollutants and exposure of receiving patients in a general ward was studied.

This paper presents the first design code for sports buildings in China : it includes an important chapter on indoor air environment dealing with indoor air velocity, temperature, humidity and fresh air volume.This code could be a guide for the designing of indoor air environment of sports building, especially for the Beijing Olympic game in 2008, and is useful to help advanced HVAC design and analysis on the similar large space buildings.

The air contamination has become a problem in Japanese classrooms. The indoor measurement of Formaldehyde and VOC has become compulsory according to the law. A simple method of measurement the constant concentration attenuation method has been used to investigate the ventilation amount in 14 classrooms. CO2 was used as a tracer gas.
The analysis of the relations between ventilation amount and concentration of VOC is presented.

This project brought together, during a two-day meeting, six experienced IEQ investigators with decades of combined problem-solving experience in thousands of buildings. A group process gathered and synthesized their knowledge about : - the key environmental factors causing building-related symptoms in office buildings and- the key strategies for preventing these problems. Those empirical results were compared to current scientific knowledge and summarized for use in developing practical guidelines for maintaining good IEQ.

In order to evaluate the impact of potential interventions on indoor contaminant concentrations and occupant exposures, a simulation study was conducted using the multi-zone IAQ model CONTAM.This paper describes the building model and eight interventions : upgrading gas stove, operation of gas oven to heat home, removal of unvented space heater, enhanced particle air cleaner, installation of air-conditioner, kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans, mechanical whole-house ventilation, tightening the envelope.