English

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.

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.

Few studies have addressed the issue of how to make improvements to avoid Taiwanese housewives exposing to excessive quantities of air pollutants when cooking. This study investigated the design and experimental assessment of side exhaust systems in afull-scale model kitchen including exhaust equipment and the measuring apparatus. The aim was to understand how different exhaust configurations could affect the overall exhaust performance.

A well adjusted ventilation is useful to save heating energy with regard to hygienic aspects or aspects of building materials maintenance.For that study, a simple device was developed with the VVGD, it aims at helping housing users to perform a sensible ventilation behavior based on reliable sensor data. During the field test, a total of 35 VVGDs were installed with 19 test users.The sensors output their signals to a display unit similar to a traffic light.

In this emergency ventilation investigation, the aim of ventilation is to minimize the influence of contaminative gas upon the occupants.A two-dimensional Cellular Automata model is used to calculate the occupants developing distribution during an emergency event. With the numerical simulation tool, the negative influence on every person has been calculated.