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INDOOR ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

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"Indoor Environmental Quality," as the name implies, simply refers to the quality of the air in an office or other building environments. Workers are often concerned that they have symptoms or health conditions from exposures to contaminants in the buildings where they work.  One reason for this concern is that their symptoms often get better when they are not in the building. While research has shown that some respiratory symptoms and illnesses can be associated with damp buildings, it is still unclear what measurements of indoor contaminants show that workers are at risk for disease.  In most instances where a worker and his or her physician suspect that the building environment is causing a specific health condition, the information available from medical tests and tests of the environment is not sufficient to establish which contaminants are responsible.  Despite uncertainty about what to measure and how to interpret what is measured, research shows that building-related symptoms are associated with building characteristics, including dampness, cleanliness, and ventilation characteristics.

Indoor environments are highly complex and building occupants may be exposed to a variety of contaminants (in the form of gases and particles) from office machines, cleaning products, construction activities, carpets and furnishings, perfumes, cigarette smoke, water-damaged building materials, microbial growth (fungal / mold and bacterial), insects, and outdoor pollutants.  Other factors such as indoor temperatures, relative humidity, and ventilation levels can also affect how individuals respond to the indoor environment.

Understanding the sources of indoor environmental contaminants and controlling them can often help prevent or resolve building-related worker symptoms. Practical guidance for improving and maintaining the indoor environment is available.

Workers who have persistent or worsening symptoms should seek medical evaluation to establish a diagnosis and obtain recommendations for treatment of their condition.

NIOSH Resources

Building Air Quality

Building Air Quality Action Plan
DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 98-123 (June 1998)
The Building Air Quality Action Plan is intended to be used in concert with the more comprehensive Building Air Quality: A Guide for Building Owners and Facility Managers (BAQ). (See below.) This resource meets the needs of building owners and managers who want an easy-to-understand path for taking their building from current conditions and practices to the successful institutionalization of good IEQ management practices.

Building Air Quality: A Guide for Building Owners and Facility Managers
DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 91-114 (December 1991)
In recognition of the need for practical indoor air quality advice for building owners and facility managers, EPA and NIOSH worked jointly to produce this written guidance on preventing, identifying, and correcting indoor air quality problems.

Health Hazard Evaluations

NIOSH conducts investigations of possible health hazards in the workplace. These investigations, called Health Hazard Evaluations (HHEs), are conducted under the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 and the authority of the Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977, which authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services, following a written request from employees, authorized representative of employees, or employers, to determine whether any substance normally found in the place of employment has potentially toxic effects in such concentrations as used or found.

Some recent HHE reports related to indoor air quality have been listed below, but for a comprehensive listing, please search the HHE Database.

NIOSHTIC-2 Search

NIOSHTIC-2 search results on Indoor Environmental Quality
NIOSHTIC-2 search results on IEQ and Mold
NIOSHTIC-2 is a searchable bibliographic database of occupational safety and health publications, documents, grant reports, and journal articles supported in whole or in part by NIOSH.

Other Resources

Asbestos Bibliography
DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 97-162 (September 1997) 8252 KB (224 pages)
This publication is a compendium of NIOSH research and recommendations on asbestos. It updates and supercedes the NIOSH document Asbestos Publications dated June 1992.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) - Indoor Air Quality

Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory
Indoor Air Quality Scientific Findings Resource Bank - Overview of IAQ

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - Indoor Air Quality

Guidance for Filtration and Air-Cleaning Systems to Protect Building Environments from Airborne Chemical, Biological, or Radiological Attacks
DHHS (NIOSH) Pub No. 2003-136
Provides preventive measures that building owners and managers can implement to protect building air environments from a terrorist release of chemical, biological, or radiological contaminants.

Guidance for Protecting Building Environments from Airborne Chemical, Biological, or Radiological Attacks
DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 2002-139 (May 2002) 841 KB (40 pages)
This document identifies actions that a building owner or manager can implement without undue delay to enhance occupant protection from an airborne chemical, biological, or radiological attack. Includes information about: what you can do; specific recommendations; things not to do; physical security; ventilation and filtration; maintenance, administration, and training.

National Occupational Research Agenda - Indoor Environment
The goal of the NORA Indoor Environment (IE) Team is to focus and facilitate research, through broadly based multi-sector partnerships, that will improve the health of workers in indoor environments.

NIOSH Interim Recommendations for the Cleaning and Remediation of Flood-Contaminated HVAC Systems: A Guide for Building Owners and Managers
This guide contains recommendations to help ensure that HVAC systems contaminated with flood water are properly cleaned and remediated to provide healthy indoor environments.

Hazard Controls
HCs are brief 1-2 page, user-friendly documents that describe control techniques documented to substantially reduce hazardous exposures to workers in a particular application/industry process.

 
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