Examining the Effects of Space on Indoor Air Pollution Exposure

Abstract

Humans’ interaction with the built environments generally actuates a rather severely exposure process. One of the important aspects under this category: indoor air and its pollution cause premature death of nearly four million people every year. The vital necessity to sustain existing built environment through proper improvement requires adaptability by using a consciously structured assessment process which focuses on the relationship of space and humans in a systematic perspective. Accordingly, as an alternative to common tendencies in indoor air pollution studies, the subject can be structured on three pillars: pollutants, humans and indirect participant of their relationship: exposure environments. Due to the complex interactivity created between hierarchical environmental systems of building, main aspects of closed spaces play an essential role as creating complicated impact-result mechanisms on progress of exposure. The existence, location, duration and concentration levels of indoor air pollutants are affected by the volume of closed spaces, air movements in and between indoor and outdoor environment, possible interactivity among surfaces and pollutants and related factors such as temperature, humidity, dampness that transforms these interrelations. Furthermore, the architectural arrangement of the spaces affects the exposure by determining location and duration of building users. It is believed that constituting systematization for fundamental properties of closed spaces as exposure environments can be useful to reveal interrelations between three participants of exposure in a broader and more holistic comprehension consistent with whole systems thinking in preference to common popularized approaches which mainly concentrate on quantitative properties in a single building scale towards better structured assessment activities with a higher potential for accurate results.