Indoor air quality and health in office buildings

Abstract

It has long been known there are negative substances in the air with regard to their effects on human health. Air quality is not just merely a list of air components, but the most important point is namely the impact on the people breathing it. The risk to personal health from ambient environment causes is a relatively recent concern. London's 'killer smogs' were one focus on air pollution in the early 1950 when it was estimated that the smogs took 4000 people's lives in one incident alone that lasted several days (CASANZ, 2002: 3). It brought government action to improve the situation of outdoor air pollution. However, there is an invisible air problem which began to bring about a similar level of concern starting from two decades ago within non-industrial buildings----indoor air quality (IAQ). Since 1970s, the energy crisis forced people to consider energy conservation. The one of the solutions was to build "tight" buildings. In office buildings, there was an increasing trend to minimize the supply of fresh air to reduce energy cost. Also, renovations of old buildings to make them more energy efficient did not take adequate ventilation with fresh air into consideration. (http:/lwww.indoor-air.org. viewed 12/07/2004). Since the 80s last century, designers of the built environment have shown increasing interest in indoor air pollution, as awareness of the problem of indoor air pollution after a flurry of complaints from office workers in new, tightly sealed, energy efficient building {Rand, G., 1988).