Hello everyone! For this new blog post, I will be looking into some interesting facts with regards to indoor air pollution and whether Green buildings are free from air pollution.

Indoor air pollution one of the most dangerous forms of air pollution in the 21st century. As pointed out in the previous post, people these days spend most of their time indoors than outdoors thereby increasing their exposure to indoor air pollution.

https://www.fragrancex.com/blog/indoor-air-pollution/

One interesting fact that I have just learned is that green buildings are not necessarily free from pollution in particular air pollution. Green buildings may promote the use of energy efficient appliances and other areas of sustainability, but they may not necessarily protect the health and well being of occupants. From the journal, it was suggested that there is a greater need to improve indoor Air quality (IAQ) among green buildings and at the same time ensures that the idea of factors that promote green buildings are also simultaneously emphasised to improve factors that improve IAQ (Steinemann, Wargocki, & Rismanchi, 2017).

What is IAQ?

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is related to pollutants (e.g., biological, chemical, and physical) within indoor environments that can affect the health of occupants (Steinemann, Wargocki, & Rismanchi, 2017). A definition by the US Environmental Protection Agency stated “Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) refers to the air quality within and around buildings and structures, especially as it relates to the health and comfort of building occupants.”  As people spent more than 90% of their time indoors, pollutants they are present indoors are several times higher than that of outdoor pollutants. Moreover, indoor pollutants represented over 90% of human exposure pollutants.

Although several studies have revealed the dangers of indoor air pollution, there are limitations to measure AIQ (Steinemann, Wargocki, & Rismanchi, 2017). One of them include the lack of proposed metrics and standards on what is represent AIQ. Secondly, the various types of pollutants and its severity found indoors can affect human being even at lower concentration levels. Lastly, there are still insufficient understanding of the correlation between pollutant levels indoors, its exposure and their effect to chronic health effects.

In conclusion, “Green buildings” does not necessarily provide good indoor air quality. There is a greater need to focus on air ventilation indoors so as to reduce the contamination of higher concentration of indoor pollutants.

References:

Steinemann, A., Wargocki, P., & Rismanchi, B. (2017). Ten questions concerning green buildings and indoor air quality.Building and Environment,112, 351-358. doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2016.11.010