Indoor Air Quality (IAQ)
Indoor air quality: a wide concept for a major public health issue
While the issue of outdoor air pollution in cities has been a hot topic over the years, it is also important to focus on the quality of indoor air in buildings. Indeed, the air we breathe inside housing and tertiary buildings has a pollution rate 2 to 5 times higher than the outside while we spend nearly 80% of our time in close spaces.
Air pollution was first considered only from the perspective of outdoor air. The specific problem of IAQ arise in the 70’, when Sick Building Syndrome was validated. Nowadays IAQ has become a major public health issue.
What is indoor air quality (IAQ)?
«The indoor air » is the air we breathe in an enclosed space (housing, offices, schools, hospitals, public transport, etc.). The quality of this air directly impacts your comfort, your health, and the health of the building. For example, good air quality prevents the mold in buildings and ensures the day-to-day well-being of occupants while poor indoor air quality can have many bad effects, especially on your health. The IAQ is measured by the air composition in a close environment, and by the study of comfort parameters such as temperature or humidity.
What factors influence indoor air quality?
Figures indicate that 10% of homes are over-polluted. There are many potential sources of pollutants inside buildings: construction materials, decorative products, cleaning products, furnishings, etc. We let many pollutants enter our homes and any close environment. In addition to these factors, humidity, and CO2 from the daily activities of the occupants are also inevitable sources of indoor air pollution. Therefore, it is important to take action to evacuate dirty air from buildings.
What are the effects of poor IAQ?
The symptoms of Sick Building Syndrome are only a small part of the possible consequences. Poor indoor air quality can be responsible for diseases in the short term (rhinitis, bronchitis, etc.) as well as in the long term (allergies, cancers, etc.) It can also reduce life expectancy: in France, 20,000 premature deaths per year are caused by indoor air pollutants. The number of deaths worldwide because of poor IAQ is even higher: each year in the world, 4 million people die prematurely from diseases caused by the pollution of household Indoor air (Pneumonia, Stroke, Lung Cancer).
Solutions for good indoor air quality
Properly designing interior spaces is a first step to improve indoor air quality (diagnosis of the building, choice of materials, cleaning, and decoration products, etc.). But the most important thing is to have an efficient, well-installed and well-calibrated ventilation system.
The first aim of a ventilation system is to guarantee good indoor air quality, by replacing stale air with fresh outdoor air.
Aereco’s solutions
Aereco is an expert in this field and offers several ventilation systems to suit every need, thanks to the modulated ventilation. All our products work with intelligent technologies that combines IAQ and energy saving.
Finally, to check the efficiency of your ventilation system and/or adapt the airflow, you can equip your house with IAQ sensors. At Aereco, supply a complete range of high quality systems.
