Indoor Air Cartoon Journal, October 2019, Volume 2, #81

The reduction to the sources of 1, 3-butadiene, benzene, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons air pollutants will likely reduce the risk factor for childhood leukemia occurrence. While technology development should strive towards the use of alternative products that do not emit these toxic pollutants, efforts should also be made to manage the current predicaments. The development of building products or designs that reduce the outdoor to indoor transport of the toxic pollutants, especially in naturally ventilated buildings, will minimize exposure and the risk factor. Most of the exposures to these toxic pollutants occur in the indoor environment, while many sources of these pollutants are from the outdoor environment.

While there have been several studies documenting how outdoor air pollution is a burden to the indoor environment, research funding continues to be channeled in the same direction. Contentious efforts and funding should be directed towards the reduction of outdoor to indoor transport of pollutants in naturally ventilated buildings. Such research and development efforts will benefit the vulnerable – the children, sick, and elderly – that spend most of their time in the indoor environment. In addition to considering the functionality of the products, other building performance mandates should be taking into consideration. The other performance mandates include visual/light, acoustic, thermal, spatial, and product integrity – fire safety, buildability, maintainability, and lifecycle costing.

Do you want to read more about this topic? Read Heck et al. (2013), Snyder (2012), and Symanski et al. (2016) papers.