Paper 1 H.N. Knudsen, P. Wargocki and J.

Vondruskova (2006) Effect of ventilation on perceived quality of air polluted by building materials a summary of reported data, Proceedings of Healthy Buildings 2006, Vol. 1, 57-62.

Effect of ventilation on perceived quality of air polluted by building materials a summary of reported data
H. N. Knudsen1, P. Wargocki2 and J. Vondruskova2
Danish Building Research Institute, Dr. Neergaards Vej 15, DK-2970 Hoersholm, Denmark email: hnk@sbi.dk http://www.sbi.dk 2 International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Building 402, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark
1

Summary: This paper summarizes existing data on how varying ventilation rates affect the perceived quality of air polluted by building materials. This is done by reviewing literature dealing with exposureresponse relationships, i.e. the log-linear relationships between the concentration of pollutants (exposure) and the perceived air quality (response). The reviewed data originate from studies with single building materials performed in small-scale ventilated chambers and from studies carried out in a full-scale setting resembling normal offices. Perceived air quality expressed in terms of acceptability as assessed by untrained panels was included. The results show that the exposure-response relationships vary for different building materials as regards the impact of changing ventilation rate on perceived air quality and the level of perceived air quality at a constant ventilation rate. This applies both for the data collected in small-scale and in full-scale experiments. The differences may be caused by the experimental conditions, psychological factors, physiological factors, and chemical/physical factors. A well controlled study taking these factors into account with several different building materials, is thus recommended to further study whether the observed results have practical significance. These experiments should be carried out under realistic fullscale conditions.

Keywords: Building materials, emission, exposure-response relationship, perceived air quality, ventilation Category: Human responses to IAQ

1 Introduction
Good perceived indoor air quality can be obtained by a low pollution load on the air indoors and adequate ventilation. In practice it is fairly simple to reduce the pollution load by selecting lowpolluting building materials, but still it is difficult to model how a varying ventilation rate in a room polluted by building materials affects the perceived air quality. A pragmatic model has been suggested in which the effect of ventilation on perceived quality of air polluted by sources different from human bioeffluents, e.g. building materials, is approximated by the relationship describing the effect of ventilation on perceived quality of air polluted by human bioeffluents [1]. Several studies have investigated the effects of ventilation on perceived quality of air polluted by building materials for single materials and the mixtures of building materials in small-scale and in full-scale settings. The objective of this paper is to summarize the results of these studies and examine whether there are differences between the relationships between ventilation rate and perceived air quality, and to compare these relationships with the corresponding relationship for human bioeffluents.

2 Method
Peer-reviewed journals and proceedings of major conferences were searched for papers reporting the relationships between ventilation rate and perceived quality of air polluted by building materials. Studies reporting the measurements of perceived quality of air polluted by building materials in ventilated small-scale chambers and in full-scale climate chambers, test rooms or in actual buildings were included. Only papers that reported measurements of perceived air quality made by an untrained panel of subjects using the acceptability scale shown in Figure 1 were selected. The scientific literature reviewed included papers published since 1988.
+1 Clearly acceptable

0 0

Just acceptable Just unacceptable

-1

Clearly unacceptable

Fig. 1. Scale used for assessing the perceived air quality. The assessments are normally completed in the following context: "Imagine that during your work you would be exposed to this air". The scale was not numbered during the experiment, but the numbers were used for the data analysis.

Using original data reported in the selected papers, the exposure-response relationships between the acceptability of air quality and the dilution achieved by changing ventilation were created using loglinear regression [2-3]. They were created separately for studies carried out in small-scale and in full-scale, and separately for single materials or mixtures of building materials. To make a comparison possible between the different studies, ventilation rate was normalized by expressing it as an area specific ventilation rate for data obtained in small-scale experiments, and as an air change rate for data obtained in full-scale settings. The slope of the regression line (95% confidence interval (CI)), that expresses how a change of ventilation rate will affect the sensory response of acceptability, was compared for the different single building materials and for full-scale experiments. The same was done with the intercepts of regression lines (95%CI), to study the difference in the acceptability of air polluted by different building materials at the same ventilation rate.

1 2 3

0.5

4 5

Acceptability

6 0 7 8 9 -0.5 10 11 12 -1 -1 0 1 2

log Q/A

Fig. 2. Exposure-response relationships for different hard floor coverings. Legends are explained in Table 1.
1 1 2 0.5 3 4

Acceptability

5 0 6 7 8 -0.5 9

3 Results
Ten studies were included in the review, five of which were made in small-scale with only facial exposure [3-7] and five in full-scale with whole body exposure [6, 8-11]. 3.1 Small-scale experiments Figures 2 to 5 present the exposure-response relationships determined in small-scale experiments when the air was polluted by single materials. Figure legends, short description of materials, slopes 95%CI and intercepts 95%CI of regression lines are given in Tables 1 to 4. The figures and tables show that the slopes vary significantly and range from 0.13 to 0.86. This means that a 10-times increase in ventilation rate will improve the acceptability vote from 0.13 to 0.86 depending on the material. The intercepts vary up to about 1.0 on the acceptability scale (excluding sealants) which means that at the same ventilation rate different materials would cause considerable different levels of perceived air quality. The variation is probably caused by both differences in chemical composition and emission rates of odorous air pollutants from the different materials.
0.5
-1 -1

10

log Q/A

Fig. 3. Exposure-response relationships for different carpets. Legends are explained in Table 2.
1

1 2 3

Acceptability

0 4 5 -0.5 6 7 8 -1 -1 0 1 2

log Q/A

Fig. 4. Exposure-response relationships for different wall paints and other building materials. Legends are explained in Table 3.

0.5

1 2

-0.5

3 4

-1 1 2 3 4

log Q/A

Fig. 5. Exposure-response relationships for different sealants. Legends are explained in Table 4.

In this approach the perceived air quality is modelled using one exposure-response relationship between ventilation rate and the perceived quality of air polluted by human bioeffluents, independently of the type of pollution source. But as shown in Figure 7 the relationship between the ventilation rate and the perceived quality of air polluted by human bioeffluents is different from the corresponding relationships for building materials: the slope of 0.250.08 is lower than for the majority of the building materials. This implies that the effect on the perceived air quality of a change in ventilation rate will be underestimated when using the relationship for human bioeffluents rather than the actual relationship.
1.000 y = 0.25x + 0.05 R = 0.64
2

3.2 Full-scale experiments Figure 6 presents the exposure-response relationships determined in full-scale experiments when the air was polluted by single materials and mixtures of materials. Figure legends, short description of materials, slopes 95%CI and intercepts 95%CI of regression lines are given in Table 5. The figure and table show that the slopes vary significantly and range from 0.24 to 0.96. This means that a 10-times increase in ventilation rate will improve the acceptability vote from 0.24 to 0.96. The intercepts vary by about 1.0 on the acceptability scale (excluding legend 5) which means that different materials cause considerable different level of air quality at the same ventilation rate.
Acceptability

Acceptability

0.500

0.000

-0.500

-1.000 -1.00

0.00 Log L/s/person

1.00

2.00

Fig. 7. Exposure-response relationship for human bioeffluents. The relationship was created using data from three studies [12-14]. In the original studies, the air quality was expressed by % dissatisfied with air quality. To obtain the corresponding acceptability vote the relationship between % dissatisfied and acceptability vote was used [15].

1 1 2 3 0.5 4 5 6 0 7 8 9 -0.5 10 11 12 -1 -1 0 1 2

log N

Fig. 6. Exposure-response relationships for different fullscale experiments. Legends are explained in Table 5.

4 Discussion
The present data for full-scale experiments show that the effect of changing the ventilation rate on the perceived quality of air polluted by different building materials can vary by up to a factor of about four. It thus seems that the suggested pragmatic approach [1] may often not be accurate.

The present summary shows the relatively large differences in ventilation requirements to obtain a certain level of perceived air quality for emissions from different building products. There could be a number of factors causing the observed differences. They may for example include: the type of pollution source, psychological factors like the context in which assessments are made (in laboratory vs. in real buildings), expectations and previous experience with odours and what information is given about the pollution sources before assessments. Physiological factors like more or less adaptation to air pollution and perception of complex odour mixtures, like from combinations of building products. Chemical/physical factors like how products interact when air pollution are adsorbed and/or desorbed on material surfaces, and reactive chemistry like when odorous secondary emissions are formed in reactions with for example ozone. These factors should be taken into account in future experiments investigating the exposureresponse relationships in real rooms.

Acceptability

A well controlled experiment is required in which the differences between exposure-response relationships are quantified in real rooms when the air is polluted by different realistic combinations of emissions from mixtures of building materials and humans. Such exposure-response relationships can for example be used for estimating the energy saving potential of using low polluting building materials due to a reduced ventilation requirement. This may contribute to the compliance with the EU Directive 2002/91/EU on reduction of energy use without affecting indoor air quality negatively. The new relationships can also be used for determining requirements in labelling schemes for building material and in future ventilation standards.

5 Conclusions
Reported data on the relationships between ventilation rate and the perceived air quality were summarized. The relationships between ventilation rate and the perceived air quality are different for different building materials, and different from the exposureresponse relationship for human bioeffluents. It is therefore recommended to verify the results summarized in the present paper in a wellcontrolled experiment as they may have large consequences for the determination of the required ventilation rate for different non-industrial environments.

Table 1. Legend, description, slope and intercept of trend line for small-scale experiments for hard floor coverings in Fig. 2. Legend Material description Equation of trend line (ax + b) Slope Intercept a [95% CI] b [95% CI] 0.27 [0.02;0.52] 0.18 [0.05;0.31] 0.58 [0.45;0.72] -0.56 [-0.68;-0.44] 0.35 [0.23;0.46] -0.31 [-0.45;-0.17] 0.13 [-0.32;0.59] 0.54 [0. 10;0.98] 0.23 [0.01;0.45] -0.22 [-0.33;-0.11] 0.51 [0.29;0.73] -0.50 [-0.63;-0.38] 0.38 [-0.06;0.81] -0.44 [-0.69;-0.19] 0.41 [0.18;0.65] -0.37 [-0.49;-0.24] 0.46 [0.11;0.81] -0.58 [-0.76;-0.40] 0.31 [0.04;0.57] -0.42 [-0.55;-0.28] 0.42 [0.26;0.58] -0.38 [-0.48;-0.28] 0.16 [-0.13;0.45] 0.45 [-0.13;0.45] R2 0.61 0.98 0.97 0.44 0.59 0.98 0.88 0.91 0.70 0.63 0.98 0.74 Ref. [4] [5] [5] [7] [4] [3] [3] [6] [4] [4] [3] [3]

1 Vinyl floor covering (low-emitting) 2 Soft PVC floor covering (Test 3) 3 Soft PVC floor covering (Test 4) 4 PVC floor covering 5 Linoleum 6 Linoleum - Type 1 7 Linoleum - Type 2 8 5 year old linoleum 9 Varnish on oak floor 10 Oil on oak floor 11 Polyolefin - Type 1 12 Polyolefin - Type 2 CI = confidence interval

Table 2. Legend, description, slope and intercept of trend line for small-scale experiments for carpets in Fig. 3. Legend 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Material description Carpet with latex backing Carpet with textile backing 20-year-old used carpet Tufted nylon carpet, latex foam backing (1) Tufted nylon carpet, latex foam backing (2) Nylon carpet with rubber backing Nylon carpet without rubber backing 20-year old felt carpet without backing 20-year old carpet with latex backing Nylon carpet on latex backing Equation of trend line (ax + b) Slope Intercept a [95% CI] b [95% CI] 0.54 [0.17;0.91] -0.62 [-0.81;-0.44] 0.57 [0.39;0.74] -0.52 [-0.61;0.43] 0.53 [0.20;0.85] -0.25 [-0.41;-0.08] 0.45 [0.33;0.58] -0.54 [-0.62;-0.47] 0.47 [0.14;0.79] -0.67 [-0.87;-0.47] 0.38 [0.27;0.48] -0.17 [-0.27;-0.08] 0.42 [0.35;0.50] -0.48 [-0.56;-0.39] 0.47 [0.08;0.85] -0.21 [-0.46;0.05] 0.55 [0.38;0.71] -0.03 [-0.11;0.04] 0.66 [-0.07;1.40] -0.27 [-0.98;0.44] R2 0.74 0.93 0.78 0.99 0.95 0.98 0.99 0.83 0.97 0.88 Ref. [4] [4] [4] [3] [3] [5] [5] [6] [6] [7]

Table 3. Legend, description, slope and intercept of trend line for small-scale experiments for wall paints and other building materials in Fig. 4. Legend 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Material description Painted gypsum board Water-borne acrylic paint on gypsum board Water-borne acrylic paint on gypsum board Water-based paint on gypsum board Water-borne acrylic paint on gypsum board Prefabricated gypsum wall Ceiling acoustic plate 1 year old plain chipboard Equation of trend line (ax + b) Slope Intercept a [95% CI]] b [95% CI] 0.40 [0.30;0.50] -0.17 [-0.21;-0.13] 0.21 [0.14;0.27] 0.09 [0.06;0.12] 0.33 [0.17;0.49] -0.12 [-0.23;-0.00] 0.38 [0.24;0.52] 0.06 [0.01;0.12] 0.37 [0.21;0.52] 0.10 [0.21;0.52] 0.28 [0.03;0.53] -0.39 [-0.49;-0.29] 0.52 [0.26;0.79] -0.27 [-0.41;-0.14] 0.24 [0.07;0.42] -0.13 [-0.23;-0.04] R2 0.96 0.97 0.94 0.96 0.98 0.63 0.84 0.87 Ref. [4] [5] [5] [6] [7] [4] [4] [6]

Table 4. Legend, description, slope and intercept of trend line for small-scale experiments for sealants in Fig. 5. Legend 1 2 3 4 Material description Water-borne acrylic sealant - type 1 Water-borne acrylic sealant - type 2 Sealant Water-borne acrylic sealant Equation of trend line (ax + b) Slope Intercept a [95% CI] b [95% CI] 0.46 [-0.10;1.03] -0.52 [-1.67;0.62] 0.86 [0.76;0.95] -1.58 [-1.77;-1.38] 0.45 [0.07;0.82] -1.49 [-2.58;-0.41] 0.23 [-0.04;0.51] 0.05 [-0.59;0.69] R2 0.86 0.99 0.83 0.87 Ref. [3] [3] [6] [7]

Table 5. Legend, description, slope and intercept of trend line for full-scale experiments in Fig. 6. Legend 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Floor area [m2] 108.0 34.2 40.0 40.0 40.0 40.0 81.0 108.0 40.0 108.0 108.0 40.0 Short description of office (pollution source) Typical office equipment, 20 yearold carpet 2 year-old linoleum, water-based wall paint, 10 year-old furniture 20 year-old felt floor covering without backing 20 year-old carpet with latex backing 1 month- old water-based wall paint on gypsum board 5 year-old linoleum 1 year-old plain chipboard 20 year-old carpet, 7 year-old linoleum, 5 year-old chipboard Used filter (used for 1 year) 20 year-old carpet, 6 year-old linoleum, 3 year-old chipboard Mixture of sources (materials from exp. 9, 10 and 12) 3 new CRT monitors Equation of trend line (ax + b) Slope Intercept a [95% CI] b [95% CI] 0.24 [-0.86;1.35] 0.33 [0.24;0.43] 0.78 [0.58;0.98] 0.57 [0.16;0.98] 0.52[-0.30;1.35] 0.62 [0.05;1.19] 0.35 [0.06;0.63] 0.60 [0.58;0.63] 0.96 [-0.00;1.92] 0.60 [-1.34;2.55] 0.88 [-0.12;1.87] 0.59 [-0.79;1.97] 0.092 [-0.439;0.623] 0.288 [0.250;0.325] -0.67 [-0.86;-0.48] -0.31 [-0.72;0.09] -1.21 [-2.19;-0.21] -0.50 [-0.95;-0.05] -0.31 [-0.58;-0.03] -0.14 [-0.15;-0.12] -0.58 [-1.20;0.04] -0.23 [-1.21;0.75] -0.30 [-0.77;0.18] -0.34 [-1.17;0.50] R2 0.89 1.00 0.98 0.87 0.96 0.92 0.84 1.00 0.99 0.94 0.99 0.97 Ref. [8] [9] [6] [6] [6] [6] [6] [10] [11] [11] [11] [11]

Acknowledgments
The present work was supported by the Danish Energy Agency through an EFP-05 project.

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