Pollutants found in indoor air are often several times higher than outdoors. Indoor air pollutants cause effects ranging from odor, annoyance, and irritation to illness, cancer, and even death. Since people spend the majority of their time indoors, it is important to recognize and control indoor air pollution. Some indoor air pollutants also adversely affect materials in the building and the building structure itself. The majority of indoor pollution comes from the building itself, its contents, or its occupants and their activities.
This paper is a commentary on comments made by Drs Molhave and Wolkoff regarding indoor air pollution indices presented by the authors in 2003. They make it clear that IAPI attains the following aims : it is easily understood by all stakeholders, it associates well with symptoms, and provides a setting for management of the indoor environment.
Bu this index is a metric of in-office pollution and not a metric of a specific pollutant.
The authors agree with the arguments by Mendell for seeking a composite index relating indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and building related symptoms (BRS). The determination of the (IPSI) Indoor Pollutant Standard Index is a useful first-step for the practitioners. It provides scope for further refinement that could incorporate the relative impact of more than just one measured indoor pollutant.
The aim of that study was to assess the impact in an office environment of absolute and relative humidity, temperature and humidification on workers' skin and upper airway symptoms (such as nasal or pharyngeal dryness, eyes problems, congestion). Physical factors associated with symptoms and perceptions were appraised with logistic regression models.
Diagnosing occupant complaints is not an easy task. The following article is a guide for engineers and owners confronted with hot/cold problems. It advises how to evaluate the occupant's complaint (with seven questions), then to review the HVAC equipment performances for a proper operation, to make load calculations, to review zoning conflicts and draft problems, to measure the humidity level, and the omni-directional drafts.
Major sanitory problems occuring at industrial workplaces are induced by air contaminants. They represent a high financial cost. This paper sums up the main steps and results of the European Research project COST that has developed and optimized a system specifically geared to the local capture of contaminants : the REinforced EXhaust System (REEXS)
The main objective of this study is to develop a thermal comfort (TC) prediction model suitable for Naturally Ventilated (NV) buildings located in hot and humid tropical climate. More than 1000 data were collected through extensive field survey in Singapore and Indonesia. The surveys finding based on the statistical analyses unveiled that people in the tropics have shown tolerance and different perception of TC than those in the temperate climate. Fuzzy logic concept is adopted to develop an appropriate TC model for tropical NV houses.
This paper documents people’s comfort during a 24-h period of typical daily life, immediately followed by a standard climate chamber experiment. The objective of this study is to determine the influence of outdoor weather, expectation, adaptive behaviours
This presentation will review two major microbial cell wall agents (MCWA) - endotoxin and (1->3)-ß-D-glucan - concerning their toxic effects after inhalation and their role for the development of symptoms among persons in buildings with humidity problem.
By simulating ‘the ramp change of thermal environment’ in the laboratory, we carried out the thermal comfort experiment and observed the changes of subjects' thermal reaction to the ramp change. We compared the effect of air velocity on the change of subj
Login