Case Studies of Indoor Air Quality and Sustainability Management

Abstract

The European Union strategy on air quality management is based on an articulated legislation. In spite of that, some criticalities can emerge in specific cases. The present article focuses on case studies that point out potential criticalities of indoor air quality, in some cases related to outdoor conditions, in other ones depending only on indoor phenomena. For each case, some considerations useful for improving the indoor air quality management are presented. The analyzed cases refer both to the private and to the public sectors, both to health effects and to discomfort conditions. Two specific groups of criticalities have been focused: one concerns particulate matter (zooming on some problems related to different effects that granulometric classes can have on the human health), the other related to the accumulation of CO2 in indoor environments. Solutions for a sustainable management of indoor air quality are discussed case by case. Potentialities of intervention are different depending on the kind of case: theoretical (still at design level) or applied (if the indoor environment of interest already exists).