Indoor Environmental Quality

The chapter discusses the indoor environmental quality. A variety of factors have been found to contribute to poor indoor-air quality in buildings, the primary one being indoor pollution sources that release gases or particles into the air and the other major sources include outdoor pollutants . The chapter illustrates the factor affecting the indoor environmental quality which are inorganic contaminants, contaminants generated by combustion, organic contaminants, biological contaminants, and reducing exposure. People from different cultures have different comfort zones; even people belonging to the same family may feel comfortable under different conditions, and keeping everyone comfortable at the same time is an elusive goal at best. Thermal comfort involves temperature, humidity, and air movement. A comfort zone includes an optimal range and combinations of thermal factors, in which at least 80% of the building occupants feel satisfied. Ventilation is vital for the health and comfort of building occupants. It is needed to reduce and remove pollutants emitted from various internal and external sources. Good design combined with optimum air tightness is prerequisite to ensure healthy air quality, occupant comfort, and energy efficiency. There has been a lack of systematic experiments in which building materials are ranked according to their pollution strength and the impact on the indoor-air quality of using these materials in real rooms analyzed. These studies allow to quantify the extent to which using low-polluting building materials would reduce the energy needed for ventilation of buildings without compromising indoor-air quality.