Guidelines for minimising the ingress of urban pollution

The aim of this Chapter is to break down barriers to concepts of natural ventilation. The study is part of a Pan European project titled NatVent that involves seven countries in the north of Europe. The project leaders are the UK Building Research establishment. Urban pollution is a major barrier to the adoption of natural ventilation, so successful ways of avoiding these problems need to be found.

The traditional approach to ventilating non domestic buildings located in urban areas is to specify mechanical ventilation. This strategy can seal buildings from pollution along facades, and where necessary draw air via cleaning filters to remove contaminants; the ' pressure drop associated with this process is not a practical option for passive ventilation. The draw back in relying upon air conditioning systems is in the amount of energy required to run them, hence the negative environmental impact. If natural ventilation systems are not adversely affected by external pollution then it offers an ideal alternative.