To promote good indoor air quality (IAQ) and public awareness of its importance, theHKSAR Government has implemented an Indoor Air Quality Management Programme since2000. This paper gives an overview of the programme and the progress made to date. It alsogives a brief account of the voluntary Indoor Air Quality Certification Scheme for Offices andPublic Places promulgated by the government in September 2003, to promote and recognizegood IAQ management practices in these buildings.
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).
The Healthy Building Technology Programme was established in Finland to abolish thefactors causing building related problems as it was clearly seen that deficiencies in indoor airhad an economical importance even at the national level (Rantama, 2003).
A very important issue for all activities for better IAQ in Finland has been the introduction of theclassification guidelines for indoor air quality and climate. These guidelines, published by FISIAQ,including measurable target values, cleanliness requirements and emission criteria for buildingmaterials, have been in use in Finland since 1995 and were revised in 2001.An essential part of the successful IAQ classification has been the emission classification ofconstruction materials.
Building environmental performance evaluation should make use of a life cycle assessment(LCA) approach, by considering all building process phases: raw material acquisition,manufacture, transportation, construction, use or operation, decommissioning, disposal andre-use. Such an approach is intended to measure, not only impacts on natural and non-naturalresources but also building indoor environmental quality (IEQ).
The Environmental Protection Department conducted a territory-wide indoor air qualitysurvey in Hong Kong. The report released in 1997 confirmed that one-third of the sampledbuildings were classified as sick buildings. Many of the causes could be attributed tounacceptable indoor air quality (IAQ). In response to this, the Indoor Air Quality ManagementGroup distributed a Guidance Notes for the Management of Indoor Air Quality in Offices andPublic Places for public consultation. It includes an annual IAQ certification scheme.
Life-cycle costs of investments for improving air quality in an office building were comparedwith the resulting revenues from increased office productivity; benefits from reduced healthcosts and sickness absence were not included. The building was simulated in a cold, amoderate and a hot climate. It was ventilated by a constant air volume system with heatrecovery. The air quality was improved by increasing the outdoor air supply rate and byreducing the pollution loads.
This study calculates the effect of permeable hygroscopic structures on IAQ and thermalcomfort in a cold climate. Simulations are carried out for a detached house and application ofcriteria for assessment of indoor climate is given. The results show that hygroscopic structuressignificantly decreased the fluctuation of indoor relative humidity. In the winter,hygroscopicity had only minor effect on indoor climate, but in the summer, hygroscopicityhad some effect on thermal comfort, which was improved at lower ventilation rates.
The presence of high levels of urban pollution imposes at the international level the need tothink again about the type of ventilation systems in residential buildings. This has to be donein order to provide a better IAQ level. Natural ventilation cannot guarantee either the correctchange of air inside the buildings or a good IAQ level, as there is no possibility of checkingthe supply and extraction airflow rates in any thermo-hygrometric condition.
Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in workplace and residential environments has been a concern ofpeople. Recently, Ministry of Environment in Korea has recognized the potential risk on thehealth effects related to indoor air pollution at home. Therefore, the purpose of this study wasto measure the indoor air pollutants of IAQ at different homes and investigate the perceptionof IAQ recognition at home through a questionnaire survey in Seoul.We estimated the IAQ of six selected homes based on site region and housing type.
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