health

While a growing body of scientific literature describes the population health impacts of fossil fuel production and burning via climate and air pollution pathways, less is known about the health impacts of indoor combustion. This paper summarizes the results of studies from the last two decades that investigated the association between exposure to sources of unvented combustion pollutants in homes and a range of health outcomes.

The ASHRAE Standard Project Committee on Ventilation and Acceptable Indoor Air Quality in Residential Buildings (62.2) has proposed an addendum to the standard that adds a harm-based Indoor Air Quality procedure as an alternative compliance method. The IAQ Procedure only considers 3 contaminants and only the sum of the harm from those three contaminants needs to be limited. This was determined by completing four stages of research.

Health Canada, a science-based organization, is the Government of Canada’s federal department responsible for maintaining and improving the health of Canadians. As Canadians spend on average 90% of their time indoors, indoor air quality is an important environmental determinant of health.

Healthy Buildings has become the marketing focus, if not the goal, for an increasing number of projects and organizations in the past five years. The current COVID-19 pandemic has placed a new and compelling spotlight directly onto buildings of all types, whether offices, homes, retail, restaurants, hotels, or schools. The issues are no longer limited to the functional parameters of the building design, construction, maintenance, and use.

Today, more than 26 million European children are living in unhealthy homes putting them at higher risk of experiencing health problems. Good air quality, sufficient access to daylight and adequate ventilation are important for creating a healthy indoor environment in any home, with the effects reaching far beyond childhood. Our research is based on analysis of the Eurostat microdata from the EU-wide survey “Income and Living Conditions in Europe” (EU-SILC).

This study aims to use the WELL Building Standard (v2), an internationally recognised rating system for health & wellbeing in buildings, to perform a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the effect of wellbeing measures on an office building’s energy use in three different climates. The qualitative analysis was based on literature review and engineering rules of thumb to assess the potential energy impact of WELL’s 120 features.