Presentation of international standardisation on indoor air quality (IAQ) : ISO DIS 16814

Efforts to develop an international standard in the area of Building Environmental Design started in 1994 under the auspices of ISO TC 205. As part of the overall standard, Working Group 4 (IAQ) has developed a standard which covers methods of expressing IAQ and incorporating the goal of achieving good IAQ in the design process.
The IAQ draft standard first addresses the issue of the design brief and the design process. IAQ can only be achieved through a good understanding of the building, its occupants and usage. Then, sources of pollutions have to be identified. After they are, they must first be reduced as much as possible and controlled. If not, local exhaust can be used to remove them and local air cleaning has to be considered. Only once the source control is achieved, next step should be of ventilating by dilution The draft document presents several alternative methods and approaches to achieve this goal. The draft standard addresses both health and comfort related approaches. Each of these approaches generally leads to different ventilation rates and concentration levels. Although the effect of a single pollutant can be determined, the effect of exposure to multiple pollutants is not totally known.. The comfort approaches addressed in the draft propose to achieve ventilation levels satisfactory from an olfactory point of view. Finally, the draft addresses filtration both particulates and gaseous and recommendations for design and maintenance of filtration systems. This draft standard is now available for DIS enquiry and comments are expected.