As a result of the "Sick Building Syndrome" (SBS) the confidence of operators of office buildings into HVAC technologies has suffered a considerable drop. One of the most urgent questions before reconstructing or renovating old office buildings is, therefore, whether the air conditioning system to be installed will lead to increasing complaints on behalf of the occupants and how to prevent them. As for indoor air flows, one possibility is given by full scale model experiments leading to results which are very much like the future effective values.
lnadequate ventilation is often cited as the cause of unhealthy air quality within office buildings, whilst excessive ventilation is similarly assumed to be the cause of discomfort and energy waste. However, the reality is that very little data is available to assess the significance of these problems on any large scale. The perfuorocarbon tracer (PFT) technique offers the potential for overcoming the problems of applying conventional tracer gas techniques to large or multi-roomed buildings.
In two case-referent studies the associations between questionnaire symptom reports, expressed as SES (Sick Building Syndrome) in office workers or facial skin symptoms among VDT-workers, and physical data from offices in 160 buildings were investigated. The results show that low outdoor airflow rate and presence of certain pollution sources, such as copying machines, tended to be associated with an elevated prevalence of SES.
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