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.
