English

The German Federal Environmental Agency has published a ‘mould guide’, which aims at harmonizing procedures to investigate and evaluate indoor mould contamination. The policy behind the guide is not to make a health assessment for every individual case ba

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

A blind intervention study in which air temperature and the outside air supply rate were changed in a 2 × 2 design was carried out in a call centre in Singapore. The reported intensity of headache and difficulty in concentrating were reduced by 19.5% (P

Ozone concentrations were monitored up- and downstream of used filter samples at airflowsof 1.0 and 0.2 l s-1. The ozone concentration in the air upstream of the filters was ~75 ppb,while the concentration downstream of the filter was initially ~35% lower at 1 l s-1 and ~55%lower at 0.2 l s- 1. Within an hour the removal efficiency had decreased to roughly 5% at1 l s- 1 and 10% at 0.2 l s- 1. These filter samples were then placed in either nitrogen or ambientair for 48 h. Afterwards it was found that there was partial regeneration of the filters ozoneremoval capabilities.

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.

There are several factors that affect the hygiene in the surgical operating theatres. The HVACairside system plays an important role to maintain the adequate hygiene level in the operatingtheatres. The present paper displays comparisons between different HVAC airside designs toassess their impact on the surgery staff and patient health and comfort. The present workutilizes a numerical modelling technique to predict local flow field characteristics, heattransfer and air distribution profiles.

The relationship between psychosocial characteristics and sick building syndrome(SBS) was explored among 348 employees occupying two buildings engaged in thepublic sector in Pretoria, South Africa. One building was characterized as sick(building B), whilst the other was not a known sick building (building A).

Correlation analysis of subjective responses of tropically acclimatized office workers in a fieldstudy conducted over nine continuous weeks using a 2 2 balanced design with temperatureand fresh air ventilation rates as control variables revealed that several related SBS symptomsare highly correlated. Thermal comfort and acceptability of air quality exhibit a strongcorrelation, whereas perceived indoor environmental variables have poor correlations amongthemselves. Principal component analysis further improved measures to variability bycombining coherent variables into six factors.

In January 2002, a new European project named HOPE (Health Optimization Protocol forEnergy-efficient Buildings) started with 14 participants from nine European countries. Thefinal goal of the project is to provide the means to increase the number of energy-efficientbuildings, i.e. buildings that are at the same time healthy and low energy users. Reducingenergy use by buildings also reduces CO2 emissions from primary energy used for ventilation,heating and humidity control.

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.