Introduction
This research document talks about Indoor Air quality and is mainly a concern for building managers, businesses, learning institutions, tenants and workers since they are the ones that impact health issues. Indoor air quality has been a significant health and wellbeing concern and is associated with a number of issues like; a rapid increase in building inhabitants and time spent indoors. System ventilation and heating systems are poorly and improperly maintained. Another drawback is that of air pollution from either gases or particles.
OSHA administers that improper Indoor Air quality can result to hazardous health issues to workers , therefore the managers, building owners,and employers should take hands-on measures to address the issues of Indoor Air Quality.According to Santamouris(2013), The OSHA regulatory document on the subject of the Indoor Air Quality issues provides realistic recommendations that will facilitate avert or condense Indood Air Quality harms in money-making institutional buildings, and be of assistance to resolving such harms from recurring.the document also provides vital information on efficient Indoor Air Quality management as well as a preventative measures of airborne pollutants, introduction and allotment of adequate make-up air, and protection of a tolerable climate and comparative humidity.
Definition of Indoor Air Quality
Indoor Air Quality is an expression that refers to the air quality contained by and around buildings and structures in particular as it relates to the physical situation and lessens of housing occupants. Indoor Air Quality is an imperative health and safety concern that was acknowledged by the EAP as one of the top most critical environmental hazard to the public health.
Indoor Air Quality results from improper ventilation, remodeling, environmental pollution, low or high humidity, and other activities surrounding a building that can affect the fresh air emanating from the buildings. According to Pegas (2011), indoor Air Quality may also be caused by dust emanating from construction sites, pesticides, cleaning supplies, mold or harmful chemicals released as gases. To solve the Indoor Air quality problems, proper ventilation of buildings can be considered. Even though OSHA does not cover Indoor Air Quality values, it does enclose principles on the subject of ventilation and principles on a number of of the air contaminants that can be implicated to Indoor Air Quality problems.
Every construction has its individual lay down of situations. Indoor Air Quality issues can result from a single basis or any blend of factors. Insufficient Indoor Air Quality could possibly start on deprived construction plans or malfunctioning of the construction field. Other downfalls may perhaps be related to the setting of the construction and assorted uses of the construction.
Majority of the Indoor Air Quality issues are as a result of dampness spread, poorly operated and maintained heating, overcrowding, the presence of outside air pollutants, ventilation, air-conditioning systems and the occurrence of internally generated contaminants such as use of disinfecting provisions and vaporizer goods, off-gassing from equipment in the construction, and use of automatic apparatus.
Advantages of Indoor Air Quality
As outdoor air rates supply enhances, indoor air concentrations of various pollutants emitted from sources within the housing diminishes. As of the study conceded, ordinary series of aeration rates experienced in the housings, elevated aeration rates are typical linked with less undesirable sensitive wellbeing possessions and enhanced office work presentation.
Its also apparent that occupants of houses with privileged aeration rates have lesser rates of non appearance to work or school, and enhanced learning performance. According to Santamouris(2013), the expected yearly liveliness and execution costs were very insignificantly compared to the anticipated payback. Changes in aeration rates in some types of houses such as homes and schools, no analyses were acknowledged of the costs and benefits at the general level.
Reduced Dampness and Mold
Humidity and mold harms are frequent in offices, homes and schools.Occupants of homes with humidity and mold have further respiratory wellbeing symptoms, more common are asthma exacerbation, and more respiratory infections such as universal colds.Based on an assessment, roughly 1400 office staff, there are many sick off permissions in offices with dampness and mild. According to Pegas (2011), there is hefty reductions in succulence and molds are severely reasonable, but owing to monetary constraints and other barriers a reasonable 30 % declination is more practical.
Improved particle filtration
Atom filtration in buildings can considerably lessen people’s contact to atoms, from outdoor and indoor sources. Even as physical conditions’ effects of indoor-generated atoms are scantily implicit, higher concentrations of outdoor air atoms are robustly associated with impulsive death and variety of undesirable health effects.
Often, Filters are projected to oversee on heating and cooling apparatus for increasing of unnecessary supplies on surfaces, but with low efficiencies for removing minute atoms mainly imperative to health systems for getting rid of small health-related atoms in homes are fetching more voluntarily obtainable. Consequently, there seems to be a substantial possibility to avoid early deaths and condensed unpleasant health effects through enhanced atoms sieving in buildings.
Disadvantages
There is a diverse drawback that makes it tricky to wholly gain advantage from the chances for enormous compensation from improved IEQ. The authentication for better compensation was developed recently and is not basically approved. Investments are compulsory to achieve many of the paybacks.
Often people fail to make investments even when the repay back is large, mostly when the magnitude of the benefits is uncertain. Also the characters who require to make investment occasionally do not frankly get advantage of innovations in the health or work performances of the occupants of a houses consequently its likely to be a little motivation to make the obligatory investments. Allocating the repayment among landlords and tenants could make available the essential incentives.
Concentrations of a number of outdoor air pollutants can increase with airing rate. Amplifications in indoor ozone saturations may be the most noteworthy. Advanced outdoor air ozone saturations may be more trivial. Privileged outdoor air ozone saturations are associated with adverse respiratory and irritation effects and several other health effects.
Outdoor air polluted with ozone is normally the major source of indoor ozone. Since ozone is detached from indoor pollutants and resources, indoors ozone saturation tends to be considerably lesser than outdoor air ozone saturations. Nevertheless, as ozone layer goes up, indoor ozone saturation becomes closer to outdoor concentrations. Thus, increasing the aeration rates will increase exposures to ozone (Pegas, 2011).
Principles
Ventilation that is well designed is crucial to build upon the fineness of interior air. This will help solve most of the problems that destroys the indoor air quality. OSHA has outlined a range of standards concerning ventilation and a few of air pollutants that results to problems in indoor air quality. Good ventilation as means to lower the consequences, destroying indoor air quality should be employed.
Occupants of the building should be educated concerning indoor air quality also, how crucial it is to reduce indoor air pollution. They should be taught on diverse sources of interior air pollutants and their costs for health. They should also be given the information on the ventilation systems operation. When occupants are informed, they can therefore take necessary action to lower their exposure to pollution and inform their employer (United States Department of Labor, 2011).
Exclusion principle should be used for the purposes of improving the quality of indoor air. Outdoor particulates should be eliminated by the use of airtight envelope in the building. Ground floor on the other hand, should be built as air tight to aid in avoiding radon diffusion into the building.
Removal principle can be employed in order to improve indoor air quality. Structure constructors should make sure that the structure is planned in such a way that it can get rid of pollutants significantly. The building should be constructed with several ventilation, plants and porous absorbers (Lakshminarayan, 2007).
For instance the use of spider plant can to a significant extend, improve the indoor air quality through the process of air humidification and filtering while at the same time consuming carbon dioxide. Recent studies have shown that a greater percentage of all airborne particulates tend to originate from the exterior air. To lower the number of particulates, there is the need to make certain the structure has sealed enclosed space and excellent airing filtration.
To improve the quality of indoor air, there is the need to avoid all products that have plastics and solvents. Most of the building materials currently are very dangerous and carcinogenic in nature, therefore, they must be substituted by other user-friendly materials, such as solid wood, lime cement plasters and ceramic tiles.
This will help reduce the volume concentration of VOC by a great extend. The building occupants and all the staffs responsible for its maintenance should be advised to avoid all those products that will affect the quality of indoor air.
Further, to eliminate the germination of fungi, there is the need to sustain a consistently high temperature on the wall because, fungi mostly grow on materials with about 80% humidity. To eradicate the possibility of fungal growth, indoor humidity should be varied, reasonably by the use of hygroscopic materials. Alternatively, the building should consist of finishes that do not offer food for fungi and ensuring that these finishes used have a higher PH that would not allow fungus survival (Straube & Acharya, 2010).
Improved Cooking Stove: This strategy requires the development of cooking stoves that employ the use of traditional source of fuel in an efficient way. This will ensure to a large extend that the cost is extremely reduced among the poor.
There is the use of chimneys, which are planned to remove dangerous pollutants from the kitchen. When compared to the conventional cooking stove, the improved cooking stove produces significantly less soot on its wall implying that it emits very little pollutant. This stove will help improve indoor air quality by reducing indoor air pollution.
Routine Preventive Maintenance and Building Upkeep: The owners of the building should ensure that precautionary repairs and maintenance carried frequently carried out by staff that is skilled in areas of building maintenance. This program to a large extend provides care to all the elements that keep the building operational at the maximum peak performance according to the specification outlined by the manufacturers. The routine maintenance further will ensure that potential problems are detected early enough and solutions identified.
Housekeeping as a practice involves the act of preventing dirt and dust from entering the building rooms. This may involve the use of walk off the mat. Further, there is the need to remove dirt that has already entered the building, proper food storage and proper garbage disposal. The household should select those cleaning products that will reduce pollutant introduction into the construction (United States Department of Labor, 2011).
Managers can considerably lower their building’s exposure to pollutants through scheduling work. For example, the manager may decide to decrease worker’s exposure time to pollute, to lower the quantity of chemical the workers are using or to regulate the chemical use location. Good practices when applied can significantly solve a range of indoor air pollution.
Consultations from government experts are encouraged to get the relevant information from experts. Structural engineers as experts can also be consulted when dealing with the issue of the problems of building foundation corrosions. Architects are important on issues of designing the envelope of the building and to solve the problem that may result from water intrusion through vapor barriers designing (Lakshminarayan, 2007).
The manager may opt to adopt a policy of cleaning the air. This process will entail the particle elimination of air as it goes through HVAC apparatus. The use of this apparatus to an extend will lower indoor air pollution, hence improved indoor air quality (United States Department of Labor, 2011).
Issues of Indoor Air Quality
Depending on the person’s health status, mold, and fungi, Pollen and dust can significantly cause health issues. For instance, individuals suffering from allergy and asthma will definitely experience asthma attacks or allergic symptoms when they are exposed to a particular mold spores, dander or other types of particulate pollutants. In addition, individuals without any medical conditions will experience throughout, eyes and nose irritation when they are exposed to a considerable amount of dust or mold. This can only be solved by identification of moisture problems within the building and correcting them.
Environmental smoke, particularly from tobacco also referred to as passive smoke is a famous carcinogenic product that has been connected to nasal sinuses and lung cancer. Cancer a is a dangerous disease that has claimed millions of lives and to reduce the risk of cancer, there is need to prohibit smoking within the home environment. Smoking zones should be identified and established far from buildings to reduce its effect on the quality of indoor air.
Radom is considered the world second principal root of lung cancer. It is found mostly in home buildings. This material is found indoors where they are contained in some building materials rich in radium also through soil gas flow through building cracks into homes (Straube & Acharya, 2010). It is radioactive hence considered carcinogen element causing serious health hazards to occupants of the building.
Indoor odors often arise from the body of an occupant together with their daily indoor activities like cooking, smoking and sewage. Human odors are because of chemicals from the human body. It causes a sensation of discomfort to occupants implying the presence of poor quality of indoor air.
Particulate matter is a mixture of tiny liquid and solid panicles and droplets that are suspended in the air. Sources of indoor particulate among others include, gas stove, tobacco smoke and pets. Particulates affect children’s health by causing respiratory and cardiac problems. To some extent, particulates can cause heart diseases such as Lung cancer and death (Straube & Acharya, 2010).
Carbon dioxide indoor concentration is much higher compared to those of outdoor. Major source of indoor carbon dioxide are human being body through the process of metabolism and activities of the occupants. Health problem cause includes dizziness, restlessness, rapid heart rate, high blood pressure, coma, convulsions and headaches.
Carbon monoxide is a non -irritating and poisonous gas. The indoor concentration of carbon monoxide is higher that the outdoor concentration. Indoor carbon monoxide originates from tobacco smoke and gas stove. The inhaled carbon monoxide effect on health is its hemoglobin in blood affinity. Long exposure to carbon monoxide causes dizziness, blurry vision, headaches, and shortness of breath and muscle aches (Straube & Acharya, 2010).
Sulfur dioxide reacts very fast with a range of chemical. This gas, mostly results of acid rain. Its indoor concentration is less than outdoor concentration. It reacts with building materials and further absorbed by parts of building surfaces (United States Department of Labor, 2011). The main source of indoor sources are fuel oil stoves and coal burning. The gas causes anxiety, wheezing, coughing, respiratory tract inflammation and choking.
Indoor hydrocarbons originate from housekeeping materials like deodorants, paint solvent and clothing cleaners. Indoor cooking gas also causes indoor hydrocarbons and cause fire accidents and death because of insufficient maintenance of a gas burner and cooking equipment.
Conclusion
Unfortunate indoor air is chief significant environmental harm to people who spend most of their time indoors where air quality is typically moderately different than for outdoors. Indoor saturation of definite pollutants is regularly much advanced indoors than outdoors. Indoor air quality learning institutions are a relatively complex subject because it incorporates the essentials of various disciplines.
Apart from issues linked to moisture intrusion and the expansion of microbiological pollutants indoors, the assortment of diverse resources used indoors such as carpet adhesives and artificial resources that discharge scented and infuriating explosives unrefined fumes further humiliate indoor air quality.
References
Santamouris, M. (Ed.). 2013. Energy and climate in the urban built environment. Routledge.
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Lakshminarayan, A. 2007. Borromean triangles and prime knots in an ancient temple. Resonance, 12(5), 41-47.
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