Impact of temperature and humidity on the perception of indoor air quality.

Sensory responses to clean air and air polluted by five building materials under different combinations of temperature and humidity in the ranges 18-28°C and 30-70%RH were studied in the laboratory. A specially designed test system was built and a set of experiments was designed to observe separately the impact of temperature and humidity on the perception of air quality/odor intensity, and on the emission of pollutants from the materials. This paper reports on the impact on perception. The odor intensity of air did not change significantly with temperature and humidity; however, a strong and significant impact of temperature and humidity on the perception of air quality was found. The air was perceived as less acceptable with increasing temperature and humidity. This impact decreased with an increasing level of air pollution. Significant linear correlations were found between acceptability and enthalpy of the air at all pollution levels tested, and a linear model was established to describe the dependence of perceived air quality on temperature and humidity at different position levels.