Indoor Environmental Quality

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 370.

Answer the following question and read the text below to check your answer.

READING TASK: Text 2

Adjectives

Verbs and verbal phrases

Why is it necessary to define indoor environmental quality?

"Indoor Environmental Quality," as the name implies, simply refers to the quality of the air in an office or other building environments. Workers are often concerned that they have symptoms or health conditions from exposures to contaminants in the buildings where they work. One reason for this concern is that their symptoms often get better when they are not in the building. While research has shown that some respiratory symptoms and illnesses can be associated with damp buildings, it is still unclear what measurements of indoor contaminants show that workers are at risk for disease. In most instances where a worker and his or her physician suspect that the building environment is causing a specific health condition, the information available from medical tests and tests of the environment is not sufficient to establish which contaminants are responsible. Despite uncertainty about what to measure and how to interpret what is measured, research shows that building-related symptoms are associated with building characteristics, including dampness, cleanliness, and ventilation characteristics.

Indoor environments are highly complex and building occupants may be exposed to a variety of contaminants (in the form of gases and particles) from office machines, cleaning products, construction activities, carpets and furnishings, perfumes, cigarette smoke, water-damaged building materials, microbial growth (fungal/mold and bacterial), insects, and outdoor pollutants. Other factors such as indoor temperatures, relative humidity, and ventilation levels can also affect how individuals respond to the indoor environment.

Understanding the sources of indoor environmental contaminants and controlling them can often help prevent or resolve building-related worker symptoms.

The indoor environment in any building including residential is a result of the interaction between the site, climate, building systems (original design, later modifications in the structure and mechanical systems), construction techniques, contaminant sources (building materials and furnishings, moisture, processes and activities within the building, and outdoor sources), and building occupants.

By definition, the root cause of any building failure is the fundamental, underlying condition or interaction of conditions which precipitates an issue, defect or problem. Since the underlying condition must be corrected or the condition in evidence will continue to re-occur or persist, any investigation of a building problem has, as its primary goal, determination of the fundamental cause of that problem which we call "root cause analysis." As depicted in the figure below, the dynamics of the indoor environment are complex and are best performed by a building scientist.