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Atmosphere
It is generally recognised that Australians spend 90% or more of their time indoors. Despite this, relatively little research has been done on the quality of air in our homes, schools, recreational buildings,restaurants, public buildings, offices, or inside cars.
Poor indoor air quality can result in significant adverse impacts on our health and environment. Moreover, these impacts carry a significant cost burden to the economy. The CSIRO estimates that the cost of poor indoor air quality in Australia may be as high as $12 billion per year (Brown, 1998). In recent years, comparative risk studies performed by the US EPA and its Science Advisory Board have consistently ranked indoor air pollution among the top five environmental risks to public health (US EPA, 1993).
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) defines indoor air as air within a building occupied for at least one hour by people of varying states of health. This can include the office, classroom, transport facility, shopping centre, hospital and home. Indoor air quality can be defined as the totality of attributes of indoor air that affect a person's health and well being.
A major concern with respect to indoor air quality is the use of gas cookers and unflued gas heaters. These two sources can often contribute a large percentage of the pollutants found in domestic dwellings.
Increasingly, as dwellings have become better sealed from the external environment, pollutants being released from indoor sources are being found at higher concentrations. As a result of studies implicating unflued gas heaters in indoor air quality issues, unflued gas heaters are being systematically replaced in all NSW schools.
Indoor air quality can be adversely effected by other pollutants such as fungi, microbial contamination, house dust mites, particulates and air toxics such as formaldehyde.
The health impacts of many chemical components in building materials are not well understood. Many chemicals present in indoor air environments have not been thoroughly tested and little is known about their long-term health effects (Meek 1991).
Even less understood are the health effects from constant exposure to mixtures of these chemicals (Pollak, 1993). Common health problems that result from exposure to poor indoor air quality include: sensory and skin irritation; neurotoxic symptoms; hypersensitivity and odour and taste symptoms (Berry, 1994).
The term 'sick building syndrome' (SBS) is used to describe an excess of chronic symptoms. Some short term symptoms may be described as irritation of the skin, eyes and throat. Headache, drowsiness and general irritancy are also indicators of SBS. Long term symptoms such as cancer and respiratory disease may be caused by long term, periodic exposure to chemicals such as formaldehyde and microscopic fibres such as asbestos.
For more information on the indoor air quality please refer to the relevant parts of the State of Knowledge report.