health

The stake of sustainable development is to ensure today's and future developments of awealthy and healthy society in a high quality environment. This is also valid for sustainablebuildings that should take account of environmental, economical and social stakes. Thisincludes, among others, low energy use, good indoor environment quality (IEQ) and health.One of the aims of the European HOPE project is to evaluate buildings from these points ofview.

The scope of this paper is the definition of some indoor air quality health-based criteria forhealthy buildings. One possible approach to establish indoor air quality health-based criteriacould be to define target values of a set of measurable parameters (chemical, physical andbiological) related to health. Target values to assess the parameters are set according to fullexposure (e.g. WHO guidelines, 24 h all people) or partial exposure (e.g., EPA guidelines, 8 haverage adult).

Within the European funded project PeBBu (Performance-Based Building), a state-of-the-artreport on the performance-based building (PBB) approach with focus on healthy buildings isprepared. It deals with methods, guidelines, protocols and tools to design, evaluate andmeasure the health status of buildings or designs for buildings. The health of buildings in thiscontext relates to air quality, ventilation, thermal comfort, noise and visual comfort.After an introduction into PBB, this paper summarizes the state-of-the-art with respect toperformance and healthy buildings.

Regrettably, buildings often do not perform as expected or wanted by the users. Especiallywith regard to indoor environment, dissatisfaction is occurring frequently.

This study estimated the health, energy and economic benefits of an economizer ventilationcontrol system that increases outside air supply during mild weather to save energy. A modelof the influence of ventilation rate on airborne transmission of respiratory illnesses was usedto extend the limited data relating ventilation rate with illness and sick leave. An energysimulation model calculated ventilation rates and energy use versus time for an office buildingin Washington, D.C., with fixed minimum outdoor air supply rates, with and without aneconomizer.

In order to clarify the effects on comfort and health of relative humidity and humidity ratio,subjective experiments were conducted in a climate chamber in Japan during the summer of2002. Fifteen subjects were exposed for 180 min, while being engaged in simulated officeworks and questionnaires. The experiments were conducted at a constant SET* (StandardNew Effective Temperature) with six different humidity conditions, namely [30%RH/6.13 g/kg],[37%RH/6.13 g/kg], [37%RH/7.45 g/kg], [45%RH/7.45 g/kg], [45%RH/8.97 g/kg],[55%RH/8.97 g/kg].

The prevalence of SBS-symptoms is commonly used to characterize the indoor air quality ofbuildings. For economical analysis in building refurbishment and improvements of indoorenvironment, it would be very useful if we could quantitatively relate the prevalence orintensity of SBS-symptoms to productivity. The purpose of this study was to summarize thelinks between the SBS-symptoms and productivity, and demonstrate with a case study howthis information can be applied to a case building to evaluate the economical value of lowerprevalence of symptoms with a selected remedial measure.

We conducted an epidemiological study to examine the associations between indoor climate and office workers’ health and working efficiency. We investigated four office buildings in Massachusetts, USA, beginning May 1997 over 1 year. Ninety-eight participa

This paper will review 6 years of experience in risk communication and meeting workplaceinformation needs about the health effects experienced by people working in sealed buildings.The purpose of this paper is to discuss examples of the kinds of information that theworkplace community is seeking and what answers can or cannot be provided.In the past two decades, there has been a growing concern about potential chronic healtheffects of poor indoor air quality and mould.

After moving into a new office building, employees complained about irritation of eyes, sorethroat and unspecific symptoms. A working group was appointed to investigate indoor airpollution.Air samples and floor dust samples for the analysis of organic compounds were collected inoffice rooms. Within 8 months, several measurement campaigns were conducted to assess thetrends of the concentrations of air pollutants.