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Interest in indoor air quality (IAQ) is growing at public, political and scientific levels. Complaints about poor IAQ, associated with acute symptoms such as mucous irritation, headaches and bad odor occur frequently, particularly in the office environment, where typical patterns of symptoms often occur, leading to the coining of the term `Sick Building Syndrome'.
In the present book, internationally known experts address the following issues:
- the dynamics of the indoor environment and strategies for indoor measurement
- chemical and microbiological pollution, important species, sources and detection methods
- effects of indoor pollution, in particular
- sensory irritation, including odor
- airway, eye and skin irritation by organic indoor pollutants and their assessment
- immune effects, including allergic sensitization
- chemical hyper-responsiveness
- controlled human reactions to organic pollutants
- building investigation: approaches and results
- source characterization and control
- criteria, norms and techniques in indoor air pollution, and regulatory aspects.
The complex, multifactorial nature of sick building syndrome requires multidisciplinary collaboration from very diverse fields. It is evident that communication between researchers coming from very different areas, all speaking their own language, is a difficult task. This book, presenting as it does the state of the art on sick buildings and how to cure them, is a sound foundation on which to build for the future.
List of contents
A. Introduction.- The Sick Building Syndrome - Overview and Frontiers.- B. Chemical and Biological Aspects.- The dynamics of the indoor environment and some strategical aspects of indoor measurements.- Organic indoor pollutants - sources, species, and concentrations.- Sampling and analysis of organic indoor air pollutants.- Characterization of organic emissions from indoor sources.- Sensory characterization of air quality and pollution sources.- Indoor microbiological pollutants - sources, species, characterisation and evaluation.- C. Effects of Indoor Air Pollution on Humans.- Irritation of the upper airways. Mechanisms and structure-activity relationships.- Assessment methods and causes of eye irritation in humans in indoor environment.- Indoor environment and the skin.- Sensory effects for indoor air quality control.- Indoor air pollution: immunological interactions.- Indoor pollution and allergic sensitization.- Chemical hyper-responsiveness.- Some studies of human reactions from the emissions of building materials and office machines.- Human reactions to controlled exposures to VOC's and the "TOTAL-VOC" concept.- D. 'Sick' Building Epidemiology.- Questionnaires in exposure and effect assessment in the field.- The effects of microbiological pollution in buildings - results of building investigations.- Building epidemiology - approaches and results (European experience).- Building epidemiology and investigations - approaches and results (U.S. experience).- E. Mitigation and Control.- Regulating indoor air.- Controlling sources of indoor air pollution.- Construction and health - criteria, standards and techniques against indoor pollution.- Healthy buildings - where do we stand, where should we go?.
